When You Are Done
by Peregrine
Summary: She didn't know who had won, because behind her eyes, angels still screamed loud enough to tear the air into shreds, and demons exploded, and fire rose up as flesh clawed on flesh. Then it stopped, and those who were left standing, were left standing."
1. Chapter 1

_Authors note: I wrote this for my Apocalyptothon recipient cjmarlowe before the start of Season 5 of Supernatural so technically there are no spoilers. However, turns out I was pretty good at guessing! Cjmarlowe asked for "Supernatural post-apocalyptic survival-fic; AU and/or non-canon apocalypse scenario totally okay. Mega bonus points for having a significant role for the women of Supernatural." I tried to deliver and I've finally got a little time to put it up here!_

_Enjoy!_

**When You Are Done**

She'd seen something like this once, before she died. On the news, one report of many where SCUD missiles were bombarding a city somewhere, tearing the sky apart with coruscating light, blooming bright with blossoms of livid death. She remembered feeling that distant, removed shock as she saw it; sharp horror that it was happening but underneath, a sweet secret relief that it wasn't happening _here_.

This was different. The contrails in the boiling sky were the falling of angels and demons burning up like meteors, impacting the earth with nuclear bright death knells. It was everywhere, the noise a solid thing that punched at the gut, the charred scents of destruction cloying and choking as smoke pulled over the earth in a shroud, burying them all. She stared at them as she reloaded another gun, and wrenched her blade from a demon heart and they clawed ragged light across her retinas, glorious even in their destruction. It was a never-ending nightmare where time stretched and twisted to years and back to heartbeat moments, ebbing and flowing in the mind, as survival burned, survival and purpose, driving them on.

It was _fight fight fight_, shapes in the darkness, friends and foes, blood and bone driving the conflict on. Some cowering before the beasts, others clawing tooth and nail with holy fervor or just focused self-preservation as time warped and twisted around them all. The noise went on forever, the trembling of the earth, the thunderclaps rolling their war-drums over the darkening sky.

It was the end of the world, and a coil of bitter thick roiling smoke tried to overwhelm her, and that fight was hard as she fought enemies she couldn't really see or understand but suddenly could strike down. This apocalypse was a terrible as words of prophecy had predicted and for an ending it went on a hell of a long time. Time enough for her to lie down and reach for death again as a friend.

There were no friends here at the end of the world.

Eventually she opened her eyes, looking up at the unfamiliar silent sky, her hand reaching automatically for a weapon without thinking about it. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing here, with only the dream memories seeming vivid. Now, things seemed ended. The smoke gasped the torment of the earth across stained skies but the noise had finally ceased, and incongruously, she could hear a bird singing in a half burnt tree.

She couldn't stay staring at the sky forever. She pushed herself up, seeing for the first time bodies around her, the sheer number of them making their presence unreal to her mind. But there was someone else moving near her, staggering almost -- an older woman, dark blonde hair tied back, blood streaking her face and with a hardness in her eyes that didn't miss her small movement.

"Who won?" she asked in a dry rasping voice as if she would know.

Because that was more important than remembering her name or stating the obvious of _'holy fuck, that was Armageddon, and here I am'_. No, it was important to know who had won.

She didn't know who had won, because behind her eyes, angels still screamed loud enough to tear the air into shreds, and demons exploded, and fire rose up as flesh clawed on flesh. Then it stopped, and those who were left standing, were left standing.  
There was only one answer.  
"No one," Jess said and the smoke rose up forever.

So it turned out even after the end of the world you could be hungry and thirsty because having a body back brought home the selfish demands of the flesh. Jess had forgotten that, but Ellen, as it turned out her name was after they stopped staring and actually got to talking, had to have been one among the living at the End of the World. She was the one finding weapons among the dead, who appeared to be smouldering their way into grey corpse ash without any help and in defiance of normal physics.  
All Jess could think of was a CSI episode she had seen once where they performed an experiment and made a pig carcass smolder its way to fine ash, and it was surreal staring at the flames and _remembering_.  
_Flames licking around her body, a cloak of searing heat, Moments of shriveling skin that fought with the shock numbed pain in her gut as she looked down into Sam's eyes and for the first time saw a world end..._  
"You a Lazarus?" Ellen asked, as she checked over the ammo she was finding, pushing Jess out of her thoughts.

"I was murdered, before," Jess answered as she filled a bag. Lazarus? A new word, now a noun rather than a miracle. She was a Lazarus, raised from the dead to fulfill a purpose. "Then I was here, alive and fighting to stay that way."  
"Hmm," Ellen said, her mouth a thin line. She was looking at her suspiciously. "You should be dead again. "

"Guess I'm just lucky," Jess replied a little tartly and then wondered if that was true. "And hungry. What are we doing?"

"_I_ am going to find out what is going on." Ellen replied. She seemed angry and Jess wasn't sure exactly why she was reacting that way. The apocalypse wasn't her fault, and she didn't like the way she was being looked at as though she were a waste of space.

"So, we just striking off in a random direction until we meet someone?" she asked a little facetiously. For the first time she realized she was wearing really inappropriate clothing. No wonder she'd been identified as a ... Lazarus. She came back in a mish-mash of favorite clothes. That favorite pair of shoes, with those favorite pants, and the other top, none of which that matched and most of which had a history of blood, fire, or blade now marring their comfort.

"No." Ellen replied looking across the road still drifting with smoke, to houses that looked empty and dead. "We're going to find some gear, pick up a car and then find someone who can tell us where the Winchester boys are. I guess that means John came back too. No wonder it's Hell on earth."

"Winchester?" Jess paused. "Sam Winchester?" She shivered a little as she looked around. It looked worse now there was silence. Eerie and grey with smoke and the smell of burning meat filling the air.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding," Ellen said with a twist to her expression. "You know Sam Winchester?"

"I was his girlfriend," she said. "A... demon killed me." Such a simple way of describing that flash memory of heat and pain.

"The pinned to the ceiling and incinerated girlfriend?" Ellen said slowly studying her a little more. "You know, the reason you survived that last blast without the levels of protection I have is starting to become obvious."

It might be obvious to her, but it wasn't to Jess. "Oh, great."

"Either it's something to do with him, or the fact that you were an innocent Martyr," Ellen said as if everything she was saying was making complete sense. "Like… another shield of armor."

"Listen, Ellen... how do you know all of this? How do you know Sam? What's going on?" Jess snapped out, feeling a bit shaky. It kept nudging at her that this was the end of the world somehow and that was more important.

"Sam ain't who you think," Ellen answered brusquely. "Not any more. But if you were saved and I was saved, out of the hordes of dead from the past and the present living, I reckon that shows he had a lot to do with this. And maybe..."

"Maybe what?" Jess pushed a little impatiently.

Whatever Ellen was going to say she seemed to change her mind. "If they made it, they'll head for Bobby's. That's where they go when they're really hurt. Any hunter will head there for answers. Bobby's the go to guy for demons and angels, and it doesn't get much more demonic and angelic than the apocalypse."

"Oh." Jess had nowhere to go, no other plan to follow. The fields around them were littered with slowly smoldering bodies, reducing themselves to an impossible light ash, covering the world like bitter snow. Nowhere looked familiar. "I want to see Sam," she said finally, not wanting to accept that the odds were her family was dead now and everyone she had ever known.

"Think you might have to form an orderly line on that one," Ellen said. "Let's get ourselves some weapons, some transportation. If we survived, then it stands to reason some of the other side did too. Pick up what salt you can find and any crosses. We'll stop by the church, see what the deal is there. Oh and pick up food, while we're at it.. Gonna be a long haul, Jess."

She figured that much. As far as she could tell, they had all the time in the world.

She had to keep telling herself that she wasn't stupid. She really wasn't. She'd been at Stanford, and that wasn't a cakewalk to get into and if she hadn't been killed, resurrected and subsequently survived the end of the world, then she'd been looking at a successful career and a good life. Right now, she felt pretty damn stupid as Ellen had taken charge, shown her as if explaining to a two year old about setting a salt line and wards.

The only reason she didn't scoff and call her crazy was she remembered catching Sam doing that once, surreptitiously.

_"Sam? What're you doing?" she said as he looked at her, half bent over and salt canister in his hands. He looked at her slightly guiltily._

"Uh, nothing?" he replied and he had that puppy dog look about him that made him look so appealingly uncertain.

"Really? It's a whole lot of salty nothing then," she said moving closer, curious now.

He looked sheepish, glancing down at the glittering white crystals. "It's to stop ants coming in," he said, as if aware he sounded foolish. "We used to stay with a friend of the family some summers and he said putting down salt stopped the... ants getting in. I hate ants."

She giggled. "C'mere, you weirdo. I'll protect you from the Evil ants."

He grinned and scooped her up swinging her around. "My hero," he said with a smile and kissed her in a way that made sure salt lines and term papers and the color of the sky were all completely out of her head.

Salt lines. She'd thought it was a joke, Sam just being a little bit weird, because everyone went to college a little weird and came out even weirder. But apparently, these were the tools of survival in a world of demons and supernatural creatures. Salt. Knives of silver. Holy relics.

They collected a trunk full and were an hour's drive away from where they woke before she had the courage to say to Ellen. "If Heaven lost, will any of this stuff work anymore?"

For a moment there was a pang of satisfaction in seeing a look of stunned shock pass over the older woman's face. She hadn't thought of that, that the 'tools' they used might've had the plug pulled on their power source.

"Can't rightly tell," Ellen answered after a long pause. "But a shotgun blast will make pretty much anything hesitate. And salt is elemental, not holy."

The roadside was littered with cars, tossed out of the way by impossible forces. Some of them were twisted and half melted as if a dragon had chewed on it. Jess had to suppress a near hysterical giggle.  
She had a horrible feeling that she was on the verge of some sort of breakdown. Her thoughts were flying and random; they shied away from her death, and from the sense memories of blood, fire and a defiant rage in an endless battle. They tumbled like the smoke rising up from every corpse around them. She probably should offer to drive but right now, her thoughts were too random.  
"Where's this Bobby guy live?" she asked, grateful for the four-wheel drive as they took a detour off road to bypass a crater. Ellen seemed as grimly focused as ever.

"South Dakota." Ellen answered, looking at the road straight ahead.

"You really think he'll be alive?" Jess said after another mile. The odds were against it. She had memories of the world being filled as the dead returned to battle once more, choosing their sides and of all the dead like her, and the living, the only ones left there was her and Ellen.

"Girl, if Bobby Singer didn't make it through the apocalypse then we might as well find ourselves a decent grave right now and go and get comfortable," Ellen said as if this was a self-evident truth.  
"I don't even know what he does. Or what Sam does now," Jess said. "He went away for the weekend and...."

There had been that brother of his who seemed secret and Sam only ever mentioned when drunk, or sometimes when he wasn't sleeping well he called out his name. He never wanted to talk about him, or his family much and she hadn't pressed, figuring it hadn't been a brilliant home life from his scars. There had been times she'd wondered about abuse, but Sam hadn't been touch shy with her.

"There was a brother. He hadn't seen him for years? Turned up and..."

"Things all went to hell," Ellen correctly predicted. "Yeah, Dean had that sort of effect." Her hand clutched the driving wheel in a white knuckle grip. "You start feeling sorry for yourself, I'll tell you their story. That'll put any drama in perspective."

"It's a long trip." Jess pointed out. "Not like there's much traffic to worry about."

Ellen actually cracked a small faint smile and Jess blinked in shock. It was all the more startling for its complete absence until this point.

"Okay, good point. Guess I've got nothing better to do." Ellen admitted. "Okay, well you gotta understand, the Roadhouse was a hunter bar and after a few drinks, the stories that'd make your hair curl would come tumbling out..."

Jess settled back to listen. Maybe Sam would be at South Dakota, maybe he wouldn't, but they might find someone else on the way. Surely other people had survived the final battle.

Despite everything, here and now at the end of the world she had returned to how she had begun: a hunter, with a hunter's reflexes and instincts. A fighter who had come risen like a phoenix out of her own ashes, and taken a righteous revenge on the creatures that had spawned all of this...

It sounded a lot more dramatic when she thought of it like that, bearing no resemblance to the fear and stupid panic that sometimes kicked in during a fight for her life. It didn't say much about the shitty aftermath of walking through streets of the dead, as they burned slowly away around her leaving the air acrid, or having to get into a store and sew up a couple of nasty gashes on her newly resurrected body before she sat down and tried not to cry.

"Mary! Come on, girl; stop feeling sorry for yourself in there. I ain't got all day."

Her shotgun was in her hand automatically, trained on the earthy looking woman who came in through the storefront. She seemed completely unconcerned.

"Who... who are you?" she stammered out, looking at her. She looked familiar somehow.

"And there I was thinkin' I'd made more of an impression," the woman replied. "I met you once, honey, but I must've had terrible manners, I didn't introduce myself at the time, what with you bein' dead an' all. No excuse. Call me Missouri."

"...I don't think I know you," Mary replied. How had she survived? She was no fighter.

"No girl, I'm a psychic," Missouri answered the unspoken question. "Wouldn't be much of one if the Apocalypse didn't rattle my cage some, would I??"

"A psychic. I remember, Sam and Dean..." The images came blurred to her mind.

"Those poor boys," Missouri shook her head. "Poor, poor boys of yours. " She sighed again. "They didn't stand a chance."

Mary sat up. "What? Are they..."

"Oh, honey, I didn't mean that, no," Missouri answered as she picked up medical supplies without even looking, but seeming to select with great precision nonetheless. "No, I was meaning, with Heaven and Hell both backing them into a corner and taking shots at them both, like shootin' fish in a barrel."

"So they are alive?" Mary pressed. "And John?"

"Now, normally I could tell you right away," Missouri said calmly. "But, right now things are soaked with energies. Heavens, I may be stronger now, but that don't mean I can find a needle in a field of haystacks. Now, are you comin'?"

Mary blinked. "Coming where?"

"You didn't think we were going to stop here, did you, girl?" the black woman remonstrated, as she headed out of the shop, and Mary decided to follow. "We have places to go. People to find. I'm all packed and ready. Considerin' you died here some time ago, you've got your clothes there you're standing up in and that's it, honey. We can pick up things on the way."

Mary looked at the bus that was parked out front that Missouri was heading toward. "Like what?" It seemed a little excessive.

"Like people of course," Missouri replied, as if that was obvious. "There are people out there. We're like weeds the human race; you never quite stamp us out. We'll all be heading the same way, Mary girl."

Mary was finding this very disorientating, being known by someone who she only dimly remembered. "Where're we going?" She wanted to find John, to find her sons. Perhaps her father and mother were still alive, as everyone had come back. "I'm not going anywhere without good reason."

Missouri fixed her with a penetrating gaze. "You're a hunter, girl. Them as we'll be pickin' up will need the sort of help you can give 'em."

Mary shook her head. "I hadn't done that for years, I wanted to be normal."

The older woman snorted. "What you do can't change what you are in the bone, honey. You got chosen, your whole family. It was in your blood and more than that -- you went for a poltergeist after you had passed yourself, and won. Got to be something in your _soul_ for that. Now, time's a wastin'. South Dakota's a fair way, even before all this."

"South Dakota..." It sounded like she should know who or what was there but couldn't place it.

"Trust me," Missouri said. "If your boys or John are alive, that's where they will be heading. Everyone will be heading there one way or another."

Mary wasn't sure what she meant by that, but instinct agreed with what she was saying, so she got into the bus, and took the driver's seat. How hard could it be to get there? A few days tops and then she would know what had happened to her family.

"Give me one good reason why I don't just shoot you now?" Jo couldn't believe that she had been relieved to see another person, even _her_.

"Oh, please, so I made it out of Hell. It's not the first time someone has managed it." The English accent was fast losing its novelty. "In fact, everyone made it out, so what's the problem?"

"The problem is you tried to steal my truck!" Jo shot back as they drove through drifting smoke. "There's just been the fucking apocalypse and the first thing you do is to steal the one truck that belongs to someone still alive!"

"Don't be such a drama queen. I said I was sorry." Bella tossed her hair back and Jo was privately glad to see the wince from the woman's injured shoulder. "It was the only vehicle that was stocked up and ready to go. You threw water in my face!"

"Holy water," Jo corrected gritting her teeth. "You know, now I've met you I'm even more amazed Dean didn't kill you on sight. And that you didn't go demon."

"The hordes of Hell were too busy with our rugged handsome piece of hellhound puppy chow meat to focus on the likes of the rest of us," Bella said with that flippant tone that really wound her up.

"Damn you, bitch, you stole the Colt. He wouldn't've gone if not for you!" She nearly hit another crashed car and cursed.

"He made that deal ahead of meeting me, sweetheart," Bella said with saccharine sweetness. "He's not the sharpest knife in the box. Why are you defending him anyway? I thought you and he... well, the whole hunters-in-love fantasy didn't even get off the ground. Bonding over the still cooling body of a monster, having mad passionate life affirming sex every night... was that how it went?"

Jo found her blood boiling. "Shut the fuck up. I take it back, you are a demon!"

To her surprise, the mercenary laughed. "I think you'll find I was always this annoying even before I went to Hell. It's a talent I've honed over the years."

"You're a goddamn genius at it," Jo said. "Why are you coming anyway?" Why had she agreed to bring her along? Partly because she had walked the streets for three days and found no one except for her in the decimated town.

"What else am I going to do? Besides, I heard some things in Hell," Bella answered evasively.

"What sort of things?" Jo asked and cursed as they bounced in a pothole. "Shit."

"Did you know Dean started this?" Bella said and that was enough. That was fucking well enough. She slammed on the brakes.

"Get out! You lying bitch, get out!"

Bella just looked at her with that supercilious expression. "Oh, really? And you know I'm lying how? It's the truth. Dean was the first Seal. He was the Righteous Man. Not his daddy. Do you know how hard it is to get a truly Righteous Man into Hell?"

"The other hunters thought it was John Winchester," Jo said, thinking despite her anger. She'd been ready to blame him, wanted to blame him and even that association had soured her taste for Dean. "Why are you even telling me this?" she said finally. "The Apocalypse has happened, our asses have been kicked and there's not that many of us left."

"More than you'd think," Bella said. "Couple of us in a small town? Think how many that would be in a city. From all eras of history as well, and from each side of the border. We've got corporeal demons and angels and all the others. I want to be with a group of people who are well trained in putting them down and you're heading towards other hunters, right?"

Jo had to agree to that. "Yeah. If my mom made it, she'd head to Bobby's. So would any hunter worth his salt."

"So, you better not waste time being touchy about things and trying to throw me out," Bella suggested, sitting back. "It's going to take a while to get there with you swerving all over the road."

Jo breathed out slowly through her nose. You'd need the patience of a saint not to hit the woman. How the hell Dean had managed it she didn't know. She turned the ignition again.

"Bella?"

"Yes?"

"Shut the fuck up."


	2. Chapter 2

"Dean, for the last time, you can't drive. Get in the back seat," Sam tried, in as close to an order as he could manage with his voice barely working above a whisper.

"I ain't dead, Sammy," Dean answered, although he could barely move and Sam knew it didn't take a genius to see he was functioning on willpower alone.

"You should be." Sam heard himself answer in a very reasonable tone of voice. "You've got stab wounds in your side." Turned out that injuries from the sword of the Morningstar weren't something that just got wiped away by angelic goodwill. He just hoped Michael had the pain his brother was in, after he bugged out.

"I'm not the one passing out all the damn time," Dean replied. He was trying, and failing to wrench the door of the Impala open, hand slipping on the handle. "Shit."

"It's getting better," Sam insisted. He wasn't exactly sure if it was true or not, but at least now he got the blinding headache as warning, just like old times. He could pull over and stop if they had to. "Stop being an idiot. You're the one that said we had to move."

He'd laid there, the earth transparent beneath him, insubstantial as a cloud waiting for death after that final battle. His mind shied away from what had happened, blocked out what he'd done and he had screamed his voice away so he lay silent as death in the aftermath.

Dean had, Dean had... No, he wasn't going to think about it, because all that was there was anger, terror, dark overwhelming emotions that surged in a tidal wave swell if he let them and he couldn't do that. He didn't _know_ what had happened, though he tried to remember until his head pounded.

"Dude, it's, it's the fucking apocalypse," Dean said, wearily holding his side. "We gotta go somewhere. And I promised... promised Cas I'd find him."

That was Dean all over. It was the end of the world and he was worried about a promise he'd made to an angel who had been instrumental in the personal and very public Hell they had gone through together.

"You know Lucifer went after him," Sam said, in the cracking whisper his recovering throat could manage.

"Yeah, I know." Dean looked at him and he had to be feeling bad, because he let go of the driver side door and headed to the passenger side, tacitly giving Sam permission to drive. There was a heaviness about Dean, as if the weight of what had happened was slowly crushing him to death. He looked gray in the strange dawn light, filtered through the drifting smoke, the only colour being his eyes that were leaning towards the green side of hazel.

He should be dead. Again. But he wasn't, no, and there was a crawling sensation at the back of Sam's mind that something had happened, something he wasn't allowing himself to remember.

"So, how're we going to find him?" Privately, Sam thought maybe they should head to Bobby's straight off.

"We find Chuck." Dean said as he eased himself down into the seat. "He wouldn't've had chance to run far. He'll be around here somewhere. In a bar."

Sam snorted a bit at that. "Let's go hunting for a Prophet then."

God only knew where he might be hiding.

They stayed in a bar that night, the third one they had checked that was empty of Chuck. Dean was lying staring at the ceiling that looked like a thousand ceilings he had stared at before, complete with peeling magnolia paint and it was so goddamn ordinary. How could it be so ordinary when everything had gone all to hell?

The fire he'd made flickered shadows around the safety of the salt line where he and Sam were sleeping, or at least where Sam was sleeping, and he was... waiting. Outside, the wind was blowing strong enough to rattle the doors and Dean was just lying there. Truthfully, he hadn't expected to make it out alive. He wasn't sure how he had, but the secret was, he hadn't wanted to survive. Why would he? He'd caused this. He just wanted to do his job, finish up and never have to face anyone again.

He remembered everything except that one last bit. Just as he had with Hell, he remembered how despite everything he had let Michael take him in a violation he had no words to encompass. He'd been manipulated into agreeing because human beings weren't meant to contain that level of power, and it was a death sentence, a fucking death sentence. Cas had told him as much, spilling his knowledge like guilty blood soaked gems. That it wasn't demon blood; it was just their blood, both of them. You had to be 'special' to be an angelic vessel and he had it in spades, which was why Castiel had been surprised he couldn't hear or speak to him at the start.

It was all shit anyway. All games and lies and he was sick of it, sick to death of it. He was done.

But there was the whole thing with Sam and holy fuck, he didn't even have words. They'd been at the eye of the storm and... things had happened. Inexplicable, terrifying things that he understood only because he had the vastness of an angelic mind in his goddamn head and it had set the archangel to screaming in horror but now he couldn't remember what they were.

He should be insane. Maybe he was. Maybe that was why he could feel when Sam was about to dream... like now.

He tensed automatically, the sense of it brushing at the edges of his thought and then exhaled. A good dream. Thank God, he could relax. Might even get some sleep.

His side was hurting again, and he glanced over at Sam and then carefully lifted his top, and then pulled back the rough bandages to stare at it. It was doing it again, mesmerizing and horrifically fascinating. It was bleeding stars, glittering light in a gaping deep wound that was oddly beautiful. He dabbed his finger in his blood, expecting the glittering to fade but instead it trickled down spreading sticky light all over his hand.

That had to be one of the freakiest things he'd ever seen. Considering he was staggering around after the apocalypse, that was saying something.

The door rattled and he instinctively moved, covered up and grabbed for the knife but wasn't able to get up in time to get in a defensive stance as it opened.

"Oh hey, cool, right bar," a familiar voice said. "They all look the same. Especially with the... you know, whole apocalypse thing. I thought Chuck was fucking with me. Hey Dean!"

"Ash?" Dean blinked, as their resident computer guy strolled in, still with the god-awful mullet hair and distinctly stoned look. "Holy crap, how did you survive?"

"Lazarus discrimination, man, not cool," Ash said stepping over the salt line, and proving he wasn't some sort of revenant. "Guy freaked out when I resurrected in his trailer where he parked on the remains of the Roadhouse, and locked me in. There was a well stocked fridge and a decent sized stash so..." He shrugged and then wandered in.

"You spent the Apocalypse stoned?" Dean asked.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Ash replied looking around as if expecting to see something more impressive that a dive bar. "Look, the Chuckster sent me. He knows you're looking for him, because he knows shit like that, so I've found you."

Dean was trying to reconcile Ash going out in the middle of the night for anyone, let alone Chuck. But then Chuck was pretty much the real deal when it came to being a mouthpiece of God, so he probably had a bit of authority going on now after the real end of the world. "No offense man, but how do I know you're who you say you are?"

Ash shrugged, glancing at Sam. "Got a letter from Chuck." He nodded towards Sam. "Hey, so, he turned out to be the anti-Christ after all?"

"No!" Dean snapped automatically. "Give me the damn letter." He practically snatched it away.

"Thought he'd be all hair trigger waking up," Ash said, eyeing Sam speculatively.

"He's recovering," Dean replied shortly, glancing over the rather grubby letter. Directions of how to find Castiel, and a warning that word was out about their part in everything and that people would get the wrong idea about their involvement even if he was trying to spread the word that he didn't think the Winchesters were bad guys. Oh and apparently they would meet up on their way to South Dakota.

No earth-shattering diatribe of blame which he had been more than half expecting, although he wasn't exactly sure what they'd say. _'Hey Dean, congrats on starting the Apocalypse, you suck! sincerely, The Human Race.'_

"So, you know, Chuck said you'd need some gear if you're going after the Angel," Ash said even as he helped himself to one of the now dusty bottles behind the bar. "Jesus, this place is a dive. Only got the cheap stuff."

"Yeah," Dean said already thinking about it. If the demons had him... well, Cas was probably having a really crappy time, not to put too fine a point on it. The urge to leap up and go was immense, aside from the fact he couldn't actually physically leap up and go to the bathroom, let alone into a nest of demons.

"Got some weapons and shit here for you, but he said you've still got the big whoop-ass sword."

"Michael's sword?" Dean asked frowning a little. It had vanished when he's come around, bleeding, the holy fire dimmed from incandescence to nothing though it had branded his hand.

"Yeah, the one that looks like something out of Final Fantasy or Warcraft," Ash said. At Dean's questioning look, Ash shrugged. "I read part of the latest chapter of those Winchester Gospels. That's how it's described."

"Chuck's written it?" Dean sat up then seeing an opportunity to find out what happened in that blank zone. "What happened? Right at the end? Did you read that?"

"Sorry man, the Chuck-meister hasn't written that bit. Say's it's too bright to see it at the moment. We've got the lead up, then a dramatic fade and then the aftermath." Ash said with a shrug. "Although he's pretty sure you guys will remember it. He reckons Sam's edging on to it."

"Fucking great," Dean said morosely as he poked at the fire again. That was just goddamn peachy.

"Well yeah," Ash said as he sat on the bar with his bottle. "We might actually figure out if we won or not."

"If we won? If we won?" Dean struggled up, anger giving him a boost. "Does it look like we fucking won? The world is destroyed. People came back to life and then got killed all over goddamn apocalypse came. Your last best hope screwed up."

"Not seeing Lucifer kicking around," Ash answered with another shrug as he took a belt of the whisky and grimaced. "And, you know, not actually being dead is one in the plus column for me."

_Speak for yourself,_ Dean thought privately . "He might not just be here."

"We'd probably notice. Anyway, sword thing. It's one of those cryptic messages about it _'being within you'_," Ash shrugged. "Sounds like bad reruns of Kung-Fu. I think Chuck's been getting a bit too into his mystique."

"Yeah, that's not much use. Tell him thanks for nothing on that," Dean responded. What use was a sword that wasn't around? He looked for certain qualities in a weapon, mainly it being solid and usable.

Ash slid off the bar. "I'll do that. You watch your back, Dean, there's some weird shit going on out there. I've gotta get back, they're busting camp tomorrow and moving on. Even with the markers we leave, I don't want to get left behind."

"Many of you?" Dean forced himself to ask, trying to face the accounting of death.

"A hundred and forty-three," Ash said with a surprising grin as he headed towards the door again. "Chuck's got a bit of a head start on the survivors. We've got some really cool dudes as well, from way back. And dude-ettes. Chuck said we'll be seeing you guys on further down the line. Probably best not to join up now, we've got a couple of hunters with us. The bible bashing buddies Walker and Kubrick and they're pretty sure that blank spot in Chuck's gospels is to do with some apocalyptic anti-Christ shit."

"It's not," Dean answered, as firmly as he dared, when still not knowing the answer himself.

"Yeah well, guess you'll find out when you get your memories back, huh?" Ash answered as he reached to let himself out. "See ya."

Dean sat back down as the door banged shut. He had a means to find Castiel, and that was the one promise keeping him hanging around. After that, all bets were off. He couldn't ignore this for forever. He was tired of all of this, of being the bitch of Heaven and punching bag of Hell. But it was just keeping going, following the road, trying to find an end to the journey. It just didn't seem to be right here, right now.

Jess stared out of the window as they came to a sudden standstill. She wasn't any great traveler, never had been, but she was pretty sure that she would've remembered a gaping pit complete with a city of unnatural origin slap bang in the middle of the interstate.

They sat and stared at it for a long time as if that was going to make it miraculously change into a gas station.

"Well, that's not good, " Ellen said finally.

"What is it?" Jess asked finding herself tilting her head as if looking at it sideways would make it make sense.

"Hell on Earth," Ellen said after a short pause, and glancing across at her. "In a pretty literal sense."

"That's..." She was going to say impossible, but she was a Lazarus, she'd seen the death of angels and the blood of demons staining the soil at her feet. Impossible was not a word to throw around lightly. "Not good," she substituted instead.

Ellen gave a sharp laugh. "Yeah, you could say that."

"Isn't Hell on Earth meant to be... well, doesn't it mean we lost?" Jess asked tentatively.

The older woman stayed silent a moment. "Couldn't rightly say."

That wasn't really an answer and Jess recognized it for what it was -- _'don't scare the civilian'_ talk.

"Ellen, I might be new to this but I'm not stupid," Jess pointed out. "Hell is where it isn't meant to be, and is where it wanted to be, so logic says..."

"Logic? You want to talk about logic, then you should've turned over and gone back to sleep in that grave of yours when the apocalypse came knocking," Ellen interrupted her. "We need to find somewhere away from this place and I need to put a lot more protection on this car and us. Last thing I need is a demon trying to hitch a ride."

Jess nodded and then frowned. "You know, I don't think they can possess people like they used to. They're here now, mixed up with the earth. That makes them physical. I remember fighting them in the battle and I could hit them. They were fast and strong but I hit them, and... it worked. No black smoke like you described, at least none that worked."

Ellen made an approving noise. "Huh, we'll make a hunter out of you, yet. You're thinking Jess, and hunters who think stay alive."

"Maybe ordinary firepower would work now," Jess replied and almost unbidden a smile came to her lips at the thought of a demon having to deal with some of the weaponry the human race had invented. She was almost shocked to glance in the mirror and see it as a perfect twin to Ellen's expression.

She wasn't sure how she had become this person who could think strategy about dealing with demons, but apparently she had somehow changed into that person by virtue of surviving the apocalypse. She'd had to fight to survive and she must've been doing something right because out of the billions of lives past and present, she was one of the few left standing.

It turned out that what happened when the apocalypse was over was... well, apparently nothing. Anyone left standing was simply left standing, and if her reaction was typical, that's pretty much all they could handle. They were going on a journey to see a guy who, odds on, hadn't survived because maybe one in a thousand made it through the end of everything, but nobody talked about what would happen when they got there.

Ellen sighed. "Well, we'll try that." She turned the key in the ignition. "Huh. Looks like we go around. It's going to take more than a few days to get to Bobby's after all."

Jess didn't argue or rage because what did time mean here and now anyway? What did it matter if they got there sooner rather than later? Day-to-day things blurred. They ate what they could find, they drove on, pumping gas from wherever hadn't been destroyed, slept in shitty empty hotels, or bars, or houses which felt...wrong. She hated lying on beds surrounded by the things and minutiae of people's lives -- Disney princess bedclothes in a world where the sky had burned from horizon to horizon. Comedy key chains lying half singed in piles of corpse ash, toys that had come with McDonalds meals littering the places where angels and demons had fought. It all seemed surreal and a disturbing mix of the trivial and profound.

She was aware of Ellen just looking at her for a long moment as if she wanted to reach out to her. But she didn't even as they turned away. Just like anything else, there really wasn't any point.

The kids were running around outside of the bus, and Mary found herself startled to hear one of them laugh. There wasn't much to laugh about really, because now that the sun had dropped, the fires of Hell blocking their path in the form of some twisted and hideous pool of damned lava and nightmare towers, burned even more luridly.

"Staring at it ain't gonna make it go away, girl," Missouri said walking up behind her in a disturbingly silent way.

"You say that it's Hell?" Mary watched the fire ebb and flow like a liquid.

"Pieces of it, honey," Missouri said, sitting with an exaggerated sigh of relief. Mary was just about to reply when Missouri held up her hand and called out to two of the children behind her who she couldn't physically see. "Ben, don't you be thinking that Wakanda won't belt you one if you try to pull the feather from her braids again."

Mary could hear the noise of disappointment even as the native American girl turned to confront the young boy and they ran off back to the main campfire.

"He won't learn from being told," Missouri said with a faint smile. "Which is the way of most boys."

"Is it safe for them?" Mary asked in concern. Ben reminded her a lot of Dean. Into everything, cocky attitude and an inherent belief in his own indestructible resilience that was common to most young boys. "I mean, we can see Hell from here."

Missouri put both her hands on her knees and pushed herself up. "Honey, let me show you something. C'mere."

She gestured for her to follow away from the pool of normal firelight where their bus full of survivors mingled with the others they had met up with on the journey. Ordinary people. People from the past. They had a couple of young soldiers who reminded her of John, Lazarus raised in their uniforms and Robert _'call me Bob ma'am'_, the farmer who was a godsend in getting things done, fires built, digging a latrine pit and all the practicalities than most of them did not even consider. Dealing with him and the other past Lazarus folk made her realize how much they took for granted, particularly when he exclaimed over the flashlights they picked up, and stared with almost as much amazement at the other random junk that had been day to day items in her life.

Missouri had nodded when she met him and ushered him onto their bus, whereas a day before she had stared down at another man and held his gaze until he had looked away and shook her head. Mary had had to draw on him in the end, shotgun at the ready. She'd learned not to distrust the psychic's instinct so when she said follow, she followed even into the darkness.

A little way out of the camp, there was a glitter to the trees, as if moonlight was catching on frost. Missouri stopped and gestured. "Don't be shy, girl. Step forward. "

She didn't see anything there, nothing that prickled her hunter's instincts. "What is it?" she asked warily hesitating just in case.

"That's something that has to be experienced, can't be taught," Missouri replied calmly. "Go on, Mary."

She stepped forward and light brushed over her skin and her heart soared. The moon was liquid silver gilding the trees, and there was a richness and depth there that connected to her, enfolded her. The sense of awe and majesty bubbled up making her beam with the sheer delight of how the trees tossed the stars in their leafy emerald crowns and she felt she could reach them, touch their infinite wonder. She raised her arms, twirling and laughing because somehow everything was love, everything was light and joy rose up from the earth in a golden haze that wrapped itself around her.

She wanted to stay and weave the lights trickling slowly through her fingers forever, finger-looming moonlight, earthlight, starlight together in something glorious and powerful and....

She was yanked back out into darkness with a shock akin to plunging into a freezing pool. For a moment she was so bereft she felt tears flow uninhibited, unashamed at the sudden choking loss.

"There, now. There, now, Mary, sweetheart. I'm sorry, girl, but it was the only way of knowing." Missouri soothed her as she felt a sense of bereavement as profound as the night her parents died.

She cried then for the absence of something she now knew existed and it took her a while for the ache to mellow.

"What was that?" she asked finally, slowing down her gulping breaths.

"A fragment of the edge of Heaven," Missouri said gravely. "If we both went in, we'd not be comin' out in a hurry. But there are pieces of Heaven on Earth now, just as there are torn bits of Hell."

"What does this mean?" Mary asked, wiping at her eyes and trying to control the sweet desperate need in her chest.

"It means something happened with those boys of yours and whatever it is, it tore Heaven and Hell into itty bitty pieces and scattered them over the surface of the world." Missouri explained spreading her hands. "I'm not knowing what it is before you ask, but I can feel them plain as day."

"So Heaven and Hell don't exist anymore?" she asked trying to remember that feeling that was fading like a dream.

"More like they both exist _here_ rather than _there,_" Missouri said looking with tired eyes. "Girl, that's the problem. The demons will avoid these Heaven fragments but we can't just go stepping into them either."

"Why? It was wonderful!" Mary said passionately turning on her. How could she deny them even a moment of joy with the world in ruins around them? "It was... it was indescribable! Beautiful, I could feel... everything..."

"And you'd still be there if I hadn't pulled you loose." Missouri said with complete certainty. "Heaven's just as tricky as Hell sometimes. But, now you know why angels are usually so irritable when they come visitin'. Fancy that, dropping out of that feeling to the world."

Mary could, all too well now. A part of her ached to turn around and just plunge back into that bliss and awe and she looked over her shoulder at the firelight and Ben being chased by Wakanda while some of the others there grinned and called out well meaning advice. If not for them, it would be so easy to step into the fringe of Heaven and dance until she faded into the brightness.

Missouri watched her carefully and then placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "The world is still here. And so are those of us who are left. Sometimes we have to play the hand we're dealt."

"I want to see my sons, I want my husband," Mary said eventually in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I know, honey," Missouri said, but did not give her any more comfort than that.

Strangely enough, that made her feel just a little bit better.

"I'm just saying, trying to drive really, really fast through Hell, in an SUV, was never going to work," Bella said as Jo tried to start the truck again.

"Could you... shut the hell up?" Jo said through gritted teeth as it turned over.

"Well, we're stuck in a demonic pothole," her companion pointed out.

"You could get out and damn well push, _Bella_," Jo answered. She'd flooded the engine, but it had seemed like a small barrier. The other side had been visible through the haze and fire, so the idea of plowing on through had not seemed like a huge risk..

"Are you kidding?" Bella looked at her with wide horrified eyes.

"What afraid you might break a nail... princess?" Jo snapped back scathingly.

"There are hellhounds out there," Bella answered peering out of the window. "Let's see how sanguine you are if you come across something that has ripped you to pieces."

"Shouldn't've made a deal if you didn't want to end up as kibble," Jo muttered, as she contemplated what to do.

"Nice. Are you this judgmental when it comes to your lover boy?" Bella said sharply. "Or was Dean an exception?"

"He did it to save his brother!" Jo retorted.

"And how do you know I didn't do it to save a busload of orphans?" Bella challenged, looking her straight in the eye as if daring her to find a lie there. "You don't know anything about me. You don't know my life, you just assume."

That was true enough, but Jo was of the opinion that if she assumed the worst about Bella she couldn't be disappointed and nine times out of ten would be correct. "Oh, so I'm meant to believe you've got some sob story up your sleeve that's going to prove me wrong? Newsflash, _sweetie_," she mocked the other woman's saccharine tone. "I don't care. I don't care what you did or didn't do. I don't care about your traumatic past and all this bullshit you come out with! It's the apocalypse, the world is destroyed, Hell on Earth and you want me to tug on my heartstrings and give a damn about your _feelings?_? You really are an egocentric bitch, you know that?"

"That's queen egocentric bitch to you." Bella retorted though it lacked some of her normal vitriol. "I know about Hell, I know things you can't even imagine..."

"But you don't know how to get us out of a hole in the ground," Jo said scathingly, looking out into the swirling darkness around them.

"Fine. Least we can do is put some symbols of power to protect us on the car." The dark haired Englishwoman wrenched the door open and stepped into Hell.

Jo felt a momentary pang of contrition for effectively forcing the other woman to step into a nightmare, but it had been a nightmare of her own choosing and she had screwed plenty of people over, not just Sam and Dean. A little taste of her own medicine couldn't hurt. Much.

She tried the ignition again. The SUV lurched a little and didn't go anywhere and everything had gone disturbingly silent out there. She couldn't see Bella or hear her complaining, and that was more of a shock to the system than running across a bit of Hell. She made a decision and got out of the truck.

Eyes were watching her, she was sure. A thousand terrible eyes, the dark air thick with the bitter scent of fear and cloying, suffocating pressure of despair. It smelled of brimstone, fire and the metallic tinge of blood, and chitinous noises scuttled in the darkness, as if polished scorpions were scenting around gleaming and deadly. Shadows moved strangely, as if they had been twisted and tortured and in the distance she heard a baying howl.

"Bella?" She peered around the side of the truck to see her irritating companion, pale faced and terrified, painting runes and talismans in her own blood over the vehicle, muttering and chanting desperately.

"Shut up! I'm busy, we're stuck," Bella snapped out. "They're coming! Can't you feel it? They're coming." Her voice was rising high with terror and anger. She looked cornered and desperate and the hairs went up on the back of Jo's neck.

"There's nothing there," Jo answered as confidently as she could.

"Nothing? They can make knives out of a shadow, whips out of strips of night," Bella said with a shiver. "Ropes of fire and guts and blood. Don't humor me, _sweetheart_, I've been here before. This is the edge of the abyss and they'll come and drag us in, right down to the bottom!"

"We'll get out." Jo said firmly. "The highway is... not far." She paused a little worried, not able to see it now through building vapor, obscuring the road to safety.

"This isn't going anywhere. Crap, I should've tried to get next to the apocalypse boys for all the good you'll be to me." Bella said and Jo could see her hands shaking.

"You wanted a protector, I'm what you've got," Jo said with as much focus as she could. Although she wasn't sure what she could do actually in Hell itself.

Bella gave her a look usually reserved for people committing the cardinal sin of crazy talk and got up. "Yes, we'll excuse me if I was expecting somebody... bigger."

"If you put half as much energy into moving the truck as you do bitching, we'd be long gone," Jo said examining the hole again. It was pretty well stuck for all her retorts.

"When you've been tortured in Hell for _decades_ then see how you feel about a repeat visit." At least the arguing seemed to shake Bella out of her shocked zone. Jo was grateful for that at least. "...Do you hear that?."

She didn't have to hear it, she could feel it. The shadows were thickening around them as glowing eyes, a putrid sickly yellow glimmered in the darkness as if creatures had woken lazily from a nap and were only now focusing on them as tender morsels, ripe for eating.

"Shit!"

Lights floated around them, bouncing will 'o' the wisp lights, streaking through the air around them in confused patterns as if signalling, dinner is served over here, come and get it to all those _things_ lurking in the darkness.

Jo felt a jolt of adrenalin that came with the primal awareness that they were being hunted. She practically bared her teeth as a howling roar went up around them and there were things moving in the darkness, twisting and turning, circling like hyenas.

The mantra of _shitshitshit_ went around and around in her head as she tried to lump some earth and stone under the stuck wheel in a vain attempt to give the tire something to grip. The sound of the first gunshot nearly made her fall over, and now it seemed Bella was not just freaking out, but freaking out with a shotgun. That was disturbing in its own right. She tried getting in the driver's seat and gunning it, and the earth under the tire just sprayed around. There were going to have to run and she didn't like their odds. Time to move.

"Okay, we're going to have to..."

There was a beeping sound ahead of them and Jo suddenly realized that that particular set of lights arrowing in on them were in fact headlights and hey, there was someone there.

"Don't just stand there!" called out a woman's voice. "Get your asses over here. Grab your gear."

She'd never seen Bella move so fast, because the con artist had turned, wrenched out her bag from the truck and was sprinting for the other vehicle so fast it was all she could do to catch up. She didn't even have time to mumble thanks before the woman driver was flooring it, and they were bouncing over the tormented ground at a rate that any truck wasn't really meant to go. She'd never been so relieved as when they passed through the veil of darkness and were suddenly on asphalt. It was only then that she got to see who had almost literally pulled them out of there.

She was wearing sunglasses in the twilight, and she turned to look at them. "The next time you decide to take a jaunt through Hell, try using something like a tank," she said.

"Do I know you?" Jo asked frowning a little.

"You might've heard of me. Pamela Barnes," she said, not stopping, driving and continuing on down the highway. Jo was happy with that as long as they kept moving.

"The psychic," Bella said, trying to comb her hair back into place with shaking fingers. "Heard of you. Heard you were dead."

"There's a lot of that going around," Pamela replied with a curve of a smile to her lips. "We've got to catch up with the others, I took a detour to pull your asses out of the fire."

"How did you know that...."

"I saw you. In a vision." She tipped down her sunglasses and peered over them with eyes that were bleached white and the surface seemed to be reflecting silver ripples.

"You're blind?" Bella stared. "You're driving and you're blind?"

"You weren't so much at the back of the line when they handed out tact as in another state," Pamela said putting the glasses back. "Of course I can see, only I can see a whole lot more since I came back. You look upon the raw stuff of holiness with the eyes of the soul, and those suckers are never quite the same."

Jo wondered if she could see holiness in someone, or evil. Maybe Hell had looked worse with those eyes. "Frankly, I'm just grateful you came, no matter how you got there. We weren't going nowhere with that truck and Bella was shooting at shadows..."

"Shadows that could strip the flesh from your bones," Bella pointed out. "I'm not that desperate to lose weight."

"Where are we headed?" Jo asked ignoring Bella pointedly.

"Back to my convoy. Got a sizeable group of survivors and we're headed to South Dakota," Pamela said. "Like you were. Like pretty much everyone has been."

"Okay, I get why hunters are heading there, but why everyone else?" Bella asked and Jo had to admit that was a good question.

"It's a place of answers," Pamela said and Bella snorted.

"Would you like me to give you time to read for ideas in fortune cookies?" Bella said with a hint of her old edge back.

Pamela glanced at her and smiled. "You know, there's this little misconception that psychics are founts of knowledge with innate wisdom and scrupulous ethics. I'm more than willing to admit I'm just as bitchy, snarky and petty as you," she said and her smile grew to a feral grin. "...only I can See all your dirty little secrets. You might want to think about that."

Jo grinned as that seemed to shut Bella up at least temporarily. Perhaps this road trip wasn't going to be so bad after all. If they were all headed to South Dakota anyway it was better to go with company that didn't make her want to stab them between the eyes.

There was silence in the truck for a few miles and they all wound down a little before Jo realized Bella was shifting a little in her seat, obviously preparing to say something again.

"Can't you just stop whining?" Jo asked with a long suffering sigh, hoping to head off the next diatribe.

"You don't even know what I was going to say," Bella said after a pause.

"Oh let me guess, wah wah wah, woe is me, wah wah angst," Jo answered sarcastically.

"I think you have me confused with Sam," Bella said airily even as Pamela nearly choked on a laugh. "What I was going to say was, doesn't anyone find it a bit odd that of all the billions of souls that came back and were killed, the ones that survived...well, three of us here know the Winchesters? What are the odds?"

From the slightly stunned look that Pamela gave her as her jaw dropped at the statement, no, no one else had asked the question and as the silence drew on, it became very obvious that no one had the answer either.


	3. Chapter 3

_Where his brother walked, the ground cracked beneath his steps, strange lightning snapped around him and he didn't move like Dean anymore. He remembered seeing it when Castiel had slid back into Jimmy, a different posture, different body language, but even encased in a mortal body, the presence of the archangel hummed like something solid in the unhallowed church, resonating in the air. Castiel had never felt like that, not even when he had poured his strength into him to try and twist a perceived destiny away from Lucifer possessing him._

Sam could see everything from where he was pinned up suspended midair in a grotesque crucifixion, held there by Lucifer's power and will.

"Dean! No!" He'd told him to go, to leave him. He'd led himself here, chasing demon blood, and one of them should've gotten away, regrouped maybe, but Dean...shit, he was so predictable. Fuck, why did he come back? Every sense in him burned at the approach of Lucifer, blazing with light.

"Oh brother where art thou?" Lucifer called out in a mocking tone. "Come to bend your knee to the new Messiah? Did you even do that for the Favored Son?"

"He matters not." Dean's voice was overlaid with harmonics and deeper than normal even as light seemed to spill from him as well. The green of his eyes were a vivid emerald, striking and almost glowing in the dim light of the broken nave.

"Oh really? I expect your host is being very distracting right now," Lucifer stepped forward, and he was the most beautiful man Sam had ever seen, though his host had not been that attractive. "An advantage is an advantage. You cannot beat me and it ensures you are here on my terms, lured by your slavish devotion to your angelic offices, Archistrategos. The eleventh hour rescuer comes right on time."

"You shall not win, Morningstar." It was said with certainty, and the shadow of wings filled the nave, flickering leafy green mottled light. "Our Father will not grant you mercy or absolution now. You have brought the Apocalypse. The world falls to fire and ashes. The battle begins."

"And it will end."

And there was a sword in Michael's hand, a thing of plasma and actinic lightning and then a similar weapon in the hand of Lucifer, a blade of black fire and entropic shadow.

When the swords swung and clashed, the impact exploded like thunder, and statues of saints toppled through the air as he hung there hoist up and helpless shouting again, "Dean!

Sam flailed as he woke, hitting his head on the window of the Impala. "Fuck!"

"Dreaming?" Dean asked mildly. "We're here."

Sam was disorientated. "Dude, we were parked up. Wait, how did we get anywhere? I thought you couldn't drive."

"Yeah well, you snooze, I cruise," Dean replied moving stiffly, but still moving. "Told you, my side is cool. Better."

Sam glanced out and winced as he stared into flames. He knew Dean was hiding something from him, but he'd made sure the injury was okay to start with and it had seemed almost self-cauterized. It didn't seem to get infected but neither was it healing up with the speed he expected from his brother which worried him. "Castiel is in there?"

"According to Chuck, that's the place they took him," Dean said easing himself out of the car, looking over at him as he shut it behind him. "You owe him. He used up his angelic mojo making sure you couldn't be possessed by Lucifer. You know the ink wouldn't have been enough."

"Yeah, but..." Sam frowned. "Wait, you remember that? I didn't think you could remember it. I only just dreamed a little about..."

There was something in the way that Dean looked down then, a familiar hint of guilt that alerted Sam. "What's going on, Dean?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothin'. World ending, same old shit." Dean replied but he didn't meet his eyes to start with and then when he did, it was almost defiantly. There was a tinge of that feeling and he knew with absolute certainty things had become weirder than ever because his brother _knew_.

"You know what I was dreaming! Crap, Dean!"

"What? You dream, I get a Technicolor summary, so what?" Dean made it sound ordinary, blasé and nothing to get excited about. He gave a slight smile and said, "Though, I was hoping for something a little more pay-per-view."

Sam didn't even know what to think about that, because that was whole levels of awkward beyond his brother walking in while he was watching porn. "Dean, I… how?"

"Fucked if I know," Dean said, still tense as if expecting repercussions, which if Sam could think of anything, there would be. "Weird shit happens when you go to sleep, Sammy. Can't say it any clearer than that. Whatever did happen screwed us up and made us different. You've still got something, even if it ain't the demon juice. You're the one remembering."

"Not that you ever were normal, but I'm pretty sure if I'm not, you're not either," Sam said following his brother to the trunk of the Impala. Truth was, if he still had the juice that would make their trip into Hell after Castiel a lot more useful and survivable. "You sure you want to do this? It's.. Hell."

"Yeah, I think I've seen it before, thanks," Dean pointed out. " Up close and personal. Let's go."

That was just chipper of Dean. Sam hesitated, though. "If you're sure you want to." Sam was the one who owed Castiel the favor, not Dean at this point. But no matter how much of a dick Castiel was being, Dean kept holding out hope for the angel.

For a long time, he'd thought Dean hadn't had any sense of faith at all. Turned out Dean believed with the sort of faith that a biblical saint would envy, but he believed in individuals rather than in abstract concepts. After the way Castiel had let them get suckered into the trap that had led to all of this, it was hard to get over that and his own part in all of it. Even so, he knew his brother wasn't going to leave the angel trapped in Hell.

"I'm fine, Sam. We faced off Lucifer. Should be a piece of cake," Dean answered, with the knife and gun to hand which he checked and then readied for action.

"Like the old days?" Where things went wrong. But the Impala was stocked up still, so he went for the shotgun. No rock salt, because he had a hunch that good old-fashioned weaponry would be just as good against the demons now as anything. If Hell was on Earth, not where it usually sat in all the supernatural dimensions, it just figured that it had to play by some of their rules. Still, he had the whole sudden onset of complete exhaustion thing still going on, and Dean was still injured though he was moving better. That was going to make the usual plan of go in, guns blazing, and make off like bandits difficult to pull off.

"Way I see it, they have the choice to get out of our way," Dean grabbed what he wanted and then stood on the edge of the fragment of Hell hesitating. It had to be affecting him, there was just no way he wasn't freaking out, but the only indication was an inhalation of breath before he crossed the threshold.

"Dammit, Dean." There was nothing to do but follow him, and gasp as the heat hit his face when he stepped through, like getting into a car that sat in the summer sun all day.

Hell was even worse than he had imagined. No one could put into words the simple crushing despair and twisting worthlessness that tore at his mind even as they resisted the flames. The flames almost seemed to be decorative, not touching them, but every time he got close to one, it sapped his will to keep walking, drawing him in to consume him in a different way than earthly fire.

It wasn't called Hell for no reason at all, Sam guessed. It would be all too easy to stop and just stand still because of the sheer futility of moving forward. What did it matter where they went or what they did? The world was lost, it was over and done with and they were just marking time until the death recovered from its gluttonous feast and caught up with each and every one of them…

"This way," Dean said, jolting him from his depressive reverie, his shoulders bunched up with extreme tension. He seemed to recognize the place and he kept his face turned away from Sam, the flickering light making dark shadows around his eyes.

Sam wasn't sure how he recognized it, because it was all fire to him, fire, twilight and rubble, but he followed Dean, trying to stay close, shot-gun at the ready like this was any other hunt on any other day.

His eyes started to adjust to the gloom and stabbing light of the fire, and he could sense almost more than see, strange things skittering in the darkness around them. He kept twitching, turning his head to look, until Dean looked at him askance.

"Dude, they're low level imps. You could tread on the little bastards. They're like really ugly gremlins, so stop jumping at shadows."

"We're in _Hell_, Dean. Excuse me for being jumpy." He could keep his eyes focused, after all, but what if the next shadow was a big one and not a little imp? But Dean kept walking, charging ahead, and Sam caught up so he was walking behind him.

Dean came to an abrupt halt on the edge of a chasm that was crisscrossed with chains and hooks, and dropped down forever in some sort of otherworldly version of the Grand Canyon. He seemed partially mesmerized by this landmark and it sucked the attention down and down to where howling echoes and sharp metallic noises filled the depths, and an acrid pungent sulfuric smell made him choke.

"They called this the Meat Locker," Dean said in a quiet low voice he could barely hear. "I woke up in there, hung up to tenderize for a week or two."

He stared at it while Sam tried really hard not to imagine his brother hanging on meat hooks and then Dean turned away to walk along the edge like he was using it as a landmark.

And maybe it was. "How much of Hell do you think is in this piece?" And how did they get it off of Earth, if that was even possible. He was pretty sure it didn't belong here.

"I don't know. But I recognize it," Dean said grimly. "You think you've still got that whole demon smiting whammy of yours?"

"I might have some of it. But we're already in Hell," he pointed out, because you couldn't send a demon back to Hell when you were the ones trespassing. Killing them outright already took more effort, but he'd do it if he had to. He could feel a trickle of something, elusive when he reached for where his power should be but it was there, just not as accessible as it had been.

"Better hope you can lay hands on what we need." Dean nodded over to a building that glistened wetly with what seemed like blood. "Home sweet home for Alistair. He'll have Cas." He didn't even have a hint of doubt in his voice that the principle demon torture master of Hell would be there and with a victim, and Sam guessed it made sense now that Dean knew where he was. He'd spent forty years or more trapped in this specific area.

"I'm sure he'll be happy to see me." Sam had already crushed the life out of him -- so of course, they weren't just dealing with a demon, but a Lazarus demon at that who was likely to be really pissed at them both

"You ready?" Dean asked, checking his gun and knife as they stalked up to the maw like entrance to the building. This was crazy but they were doing it anyway. "We ain't leaving him behind, Sam, no matter what. He came after me, I've gotta do the same."

"I'm ready. It's not like I'm going to turn and run, Dean." It almost offended him, because Dean knew he wasn't just going to _leave_ Castiel there, not anymore than he was just going to _leave_ someone like Bobby there.

Dean nodded and after taking a deep breath, darted inside and moved with a slick advance that had his shotgun ready and they were half jogging up a corridor, Dean firing at anything and everything that moved, heading inexorably towards the center of the demonic building with each blast.

The shots did hurt the demons now, not just their hosts as he had suspected, which made it quicker, and Sam appreciated the speed because they had to mow through them, and he wanted to shoot the walls, too. They were slick with blood, and every once in a while one of them undulated, pulsing with some obscene grasping hunger.

Dean had the knife out now, a sharp bright silver in the dim light, using it with a ferocity that belied his injured side, and Sam could appreciate that. Dean was back in a nightmare he could now do something about and he tore through demons that opposed him with forty years of payback in every move. Thick black blood, the type he had craved, splattered, fed the hungry walls of the place that glooped out to try and drag the dead and injured into the brick work.

Then they were bursting into a polished circular reflecting chamber, and someone had trapped the screams of the tortured in there, so they resonated and whirled around, trapped eternally along with tormented images that flickered endlessly over mirrored walls. Hands pawed desperately from within the mirror glass, smearing desperate shapes in patterns of terror, a face mashed against it, and eyes wide in horror just for a split second. It made him want to be sick, even a fraction of what he glimpsed, but he stayed with it as Dean swung his hand and punched through the glass to reveal a final doorway, and through it a glimpse of their quarry.

Dean knew where he was going, and hopefully he knew how disorienting it was to just follow, to walk through Hell and all of its twisted nightmare reflections of reality, and just trust. Trust that Dean knew what he was doing, because Sam was building on the disconnected feeling that he did, and hoping that it was right.

And then he saw Castiel…Jimmy, naked and strung up from the ceiling, and he knew Dean had been on track all along.

Dean stepped forward with a snarl of anger and then seemed to remember to rein himself in. "Cas?" he called out, though the angel's head drooped low and blood ran and dripped over his skin.

Slow mocking applause began from the shadows, a tall lanky figure stepping forward.

"Dean, Dean, Dean...I knew once you had the taste for it, you would come back to your true spiritual home. And you brought little Sammy, too. How nice. Brothers that torture together, stick together?"

"I think you're misinterpreting why we're here." Sam kept himself from saying outright that they were going to kick his ass, or from looking at Castiel hanging from the roof in what he assumed was his mortal host. He just needed to focus, find the pieces of himself that he'd crushed the demon with the last time and turn that trickle of power into a flood.

"Didn't you know this is where Dean belongs?" Alistair lisped at them, his eyes showing hints of their true nature as they swirled with clouded color. "After all, he's spent more time here than he ever spent out in the world. This is his world and yours, Sam. I can smell the darkness of Hell on you, just as I can scent the taint of angelic interference on him."

He could feel something that he was ready to use, but hesitated at the demon's words. He'd been too easily tricked before. He'd done it, he'd killed Lilith. He'd brought it _down_ on them, and he wasn't sure if this was another trip like that or not. It was hard to tell who was being honest with them and who wasn't. Better not to strike with a weapon that might be just as dangerous to them.

"Great. You just keep doing that." Sam lifted his gun, and fired straight at him.

Alistair lifted his hand and stopped the bullet midair, and then letting it fall to the ground. "We still have a few tricks. I may not be able to possess as I once did, but I still have power. I can stop your bullets from striking flesh..."

"But if they strike, you can't escape the injury," Dean stated flatly stepping forward.

"So we are at an impasse," Alistair said agreeably. "You do realize one of you is officially the Lord of Hell." He looked directly at Sam. "I would so hate to kill my rightful liege."

"We want Castiel back. You give him to us, alive, we leave." He wasn't sure what kind of footing he had, and if they could stall and buy him time, he was going to do it. He needed enough time to feel confident that he could snuff out Alistair.

"Castiel, who betrayed you, then his own kind?" Alistair asked, fingering a blade with nasty serrated edges and absently picking out bits of sinew and flesh from the crevices. "Castiel, who has already begged for mercy, when secretly he thought you weak and mortal when you broke the first Seal, Dean? The angel who could never work out what the higher duty was, and what was a mindfuck and what was the truth and in doing so dragged you kicking and screaming into the Apocalypse?"

There was a moan from above them and Dean managed not to look up even as Sam saw the demon glance that way, and in the flicker of an eye, his brother leapt at Alistair, knife concealed but ready.

"Dean!" Sam shouted as the two clashed, and then when Alistair shed his human visage and his face became a grotesque hideous mockery of humanity.

"Remember this, Dean?" he growled, his voice distorted into something inhuman. "Remember when you were mine and you looked into my eyes for mercy!" Ragged darkness gathered around him as he punched at Dean, bringing around the knife, and putting Dean on the defensive with the slashing blade. Sam reached mentally, mimicking the grasping with his hand but it was like trying to get a grip on an eel. He tried again, hearing Alistair cough and tightened his grip.

Almost immediately he was flung back against the hungry walls, feeling them pluck instantly at his body.

"You surprise me, Sam. Not burnt out after all. Well, I suppose I should just kill you then. I wanted a figurehead, not a player."

The invisible grip around his throat made him choke and writhe, and he couldn't focus properly. It felt fuzzy somehow, even as he heard Alistair laugh and Dean swear.

It was then of all times he had a flash of vision, compressed and needle sharp. Dean with the sword melting into his hand, light soaking into him like the grace of an angel. Memory, not a vision then. But how could he communicate that when he was choking to death?

Then he recalled dimly that Dean apparently shared his visions but it was difficult to tell because his sight was graying out and things seemed to be going pale and stark behind his eyes. There was some degree of screaming before the pressure released and he gagged and choked, whooping in air before becoming aware of a hush around him.

Blinking a little, he focused on his brother, who seemed to staring at the weapon in his hand. The sword, the blazing sword of the archangel was in his hand, shining like the birth of a star, picking out his face in light and shadow. "Shit. I thought Chuck was talking some mumbo jumbo metaphor stuff when he said the sword was in me. I didn't think that was literal."

Sam watched him swipe at the chains holding Castiel and tried to catch him as the demonic steel melted like a cobweb. The result was more an undignified collapse than a rescue.

"Dean…" Castiel managed in a rough voice that was filled with a tinge of disbelief and wonder. It wasn't just the fact they were there, though; he appeared to be focusing on the sword in amazement. "No mortal may hold the sword of the Commander of the Heavenly Host. I believed you were being host to Michael."

"Yeah, well sorry to disappoint, " Dean said, obviously needing help to move from the way he was struggling. "We've got to get you out of here. Not so much raising you up as dragging you along."

Sam pushed himself up, away from the salivating walls, shaking his head clear. "You killed him?" he asked, looking at the corpse that was shouldering away in creeping embers, to the strange corpse ash that had covered the world like a shroud.

"Son of a bitch cut me, " Dean answered, slipping off his jacket revealing a bloodstained shirt and then passing it over to Castiel. "Next thing I know this sword is in my hand and I'm stabbing the sucker and he lights up from the inside out."

Sam took off his coat and passed it over for the angel to wrap around his waist, because running through Hell naked wouldn't help. He could see his brother contemplating how to carry their rescuee, and intervened because that was damn stupid when he was injured. "Okay, look, I'll carry him, you're the one with the big sword thing right now. I've got a feeling that's a lot more effective and I'm pretty sure we're going to see company pretty soon."

He didn't wait for permission, he just grabbed hold of the angel and scooped him up; Dean was still injured, and it was true. Looked like the big sword was more useful than anything else down here. Not for the first time Sam wondered what the hell use his so-called powers were anyway.

Dean decided that the interesting thing about the escape from Hell was his reluctance to leave. Yes, there was the tug of the familiar, and Alistair had jabbed. He'd lived, and technically died over and over in this region of Hell for more time than he had lived on Earth and that had imprinted itself on his mind. But what that meant was that he knew who was there, who he was leaving behind. Souls he had tortured maybe, who hadn't escaped the chasm and the endless torments of Alistair's zone.

He hadn't wanted to leave them behind; he knew what it felt like to give up hope. Time was inexorable and faith eroded under relentless abandonment and pain and it hurt him to leave. When they had been surrounded on the way out, he had let that rage loose and the sword had done that thing that he half remembered from scrambled memories. It flared with a power that jolted him to the core and then not only demons were burning away, but Hell itself. The chains of the Meat Locker curled and twisted like hairs singed with flame; the creeping white and gold fire crawled over the ground, the buildings, contagious and cleansing until the main danger came from freed souls and demons fleeing, threatening to catch them in a stampede.

By the time they got to the Impala, Dean was groggy himself and the sword had vanished so he didn't argue when Sam pushed them both in the back seat and drove them to some anonymous abandoned hotel. He was off raiding the kitchen while Dean found some clothes for Castiel, who was standing in a cold shower, trying to wash the feel of Hell off of his skin.

"Cas? C'mon, man, you'll catch pneumonia. Or you would if you could," Dean called out, looking for a clean t-shirt for himself. There wasn't any reason try and do laundry right now. He was pretty sure the world could live for decades off of what was left behind, assuming this wasn't the lull before everyone left was picked off. "Not sure what the rules are at the minute with you guys."

"I am still an angel of the lord," Castiel replied in a rough overstrained voice as he entered the room and Dean had to try not to look because modesty was definitely not something the angelic host understood. "This has not changed, though it would seem I can experience pain in full measure as this is now my body, not that of the host."

Dean frowned. "What about Jimmy, Cas?" Fuck, what had happened to Jimmy -- he didn't want to hear that he had been screwed over again. All the man had wanted was to go back to his family.

"Jimmy Novak was raised to his body, and I share only his visage," Castiel replied reaching for a shirt.

"A straight answer would be good," Dean pressed even as he watched a cut start to heal on Castiel's chest and bruises unbloom on smooth skin. "You've still got the healing mojo, Cas."

"Yes." Castiel replied with a calmness that seemed forced to Dean's ear. "I am created in this form as one most familiar to my mind, but I set Jimmy free as the storm broke. I am much as Anna was."

"Not quite so much of a babe though," Dean said automatically.

Castiel was just watching him with dark intense look that made him uncomfortable. "I wish to thank you and your brother again for coming after me."

It made him practically twitch. Cas shouldn't be thanking him, not after what they had done. "Yeah, well. I've been in that position so... I promised."

"Nevertheless." He suddenly realized that Castiel's hands were actually shaking and he looked very pale. He should remember this. He'd been through this, his heart pounding and the overwhelming fear that someone was going to take him back there.

"Hey, Cas, you're out of there." Dean felt he had to reassure him, even though he knew he was pretty crap at it. "The reaction's a bitch." He could remember it, how even the ordinary sights and sounds of the world seemed imbued with meaning and wonder, how everything felt too intense and real. He patted the angel on the shoulder a little awkwardly, as if that was going to help.

"I did not have faith that you would survive," the angel admitted in a low voice.

"It's pretty difficult to have faith when Alistair is working on you," Dean countered with a shrug. "I think I speak from experience."

"Forgive me, Dean. To us, forty years seem so little time to hold faith. We do not comprehend that pain and time is constantly fickle to our attention. I did not understand."

Even though Dean had long suspected that even Castiel had thought he had been weak to break, the confirmation still sucker punched him. "You believe I caused the fucking Apocalypse."

"No, Dean, I believe you were forced and betrayed by those around you," Castiel answered, hands still shaking as he sat upon one of the beds. "That is different."

"No ,it's not. No, it's goddamn NOT! How it happened don't matter, it's the fact it happened at all." Dean couldn't hide the bitterness in his reply. "You told me I was going to die, Cas, that when you tricked me into giving Heaven an open access ticket to ride Dean Winchester hard, that it was going to kill me. And you know what? When you said that, _I thanked God_. I fucking thanked God because you'd have to go right back to Adam and Eve to see a screw up on the scale I managed. I just... I just wanted to see it through. Pay it off."

Castiel was looking at him as if he was talking complete gibberish, and maybe he was. "Dean, you served the purpose of Heaven."

"Yeah, well, not overly well disposed to Heaven after the stuff they pulled. What about the purpose of humans, huh? I'm the man who killed the world." Dean paced then, his side stinging again. The old wound never seemed to stay closed no matter how he patched it. "Do you know what happened at the end? "

"No. I am afraid I do not," Castiel replied, shaking his head. "You have Michael's sword, but should not be able to wield it. You are alive when playing host to the Commander should have destroyed you. Your very presence alive is a miracle, Dean."

"I want to know if Sammy is okay," Dean said, getting to his priority list. "They said it might change him permanently."

"He is well. The tainted blood purged from him, and he always has held the potential within him." Castiel answered with more certainty. "The Demon blood was... similar to the effects of drugs that humans sometimes take. Making him believe implicitly that he was unstoppable, powerful, but the power itself was born in him."

Dean wasn't sure if that was good news or bad news, because if it was born in him then what did that mean? Was he the Chosen one? Was Sammy, his kid brother, the fucking anti-Christ for all his own denial over and over again?

"Then what did he do, Cas?" Dean asked almost despairing as he sat down. "What did he do?"

The angel shook his head slowly. "Something impossible," he replied gravely. "Much as you have done with the Sword of Michael. You do not understand, Dean. The sword of an angel is not a 'thing'; it is a distilled part of their energy, their power and thought. Angels were created as the Words of God. We are His thoughts, his Will made manifest into existence and each of us is something unique that no other angel can duplicate and our weapons are a focused distilled version of God's power. It should be impossible to take the essence of the Commander of the Host, and draw it into yourself as we ourselves do. It should ignite you; burn you like paper in an inferno. Many of us no longer form it into a weapon, we just..."

"Smite?" Dean interrupted, and frowned thoughtfully. "Hey, does that mean I could...you know, make it into anything? A sacred shotgun? A ...holy hand grenade?" He couldn't help himself, his mouth twitched a little as Castiel looked at him with that innocent seriousness and complete blankness he displayed at pretty much any and all pop culture references.

"If you wish." Castiel said inclining his head and then looked towards the door just before Sam came in. He was a little like a dog that way. Neat trick.

"Found a camp stove, so we've got some canned casserole and vegetables I found down there," Sam said depositing armfuls of stuff on the side. "Or soup...or spaghetti, or chili. Whatever. They've got a good stock. We should get a good selection before we move on tomorrow. Oh, and cake stuff too. You want pie, Dean, you'll have to make it."

"Seriously gonna do that," Dean answered, sure that hot food would help shift his own unsteadiness. He was losing blood all the time, and needed to replenish it. "Cas, what would you like?"

"I do not know." The angel looked confused. "I have not needed to eat."

"After being tortured in Hell, I reckon you need something," Dean said decisively. Nothing like good food, or even bad food to bring him back to Earth. "Even if you don't need it, it could help."

Sam was firing up the little camping stove and that meant coffee, and something hot and he felt he could do with that because whatever he'd managed to do, it had left him wiped out.

"Then we shall have this," Castiel said picking up the chili and Dean grinned a little.

"You could just, you know, hop back to Heaven and have whatever angels eat," he said as he clattered the pots Sam had grabbed and used his knife to open the can. He vaguely realized he was hungry but that had seemed unimportant until now, and he was abruptly ravenous.

"I cannot," Castiel replied smoothing down the front of his 'borrowed' jeans that just looked strange on him, but fitted well. "There is no Heaven there to reach for."

That stopped the pair of them. "What?" Sam asked, just a bit more coherent than Dean was at getting his thoughts together. "What does that mean?"

"All that is Heaven is... here," Castiel answered gesturing, with his trembling hands around them. "Just as all that is Hell. But it does not summon me to it in the same way as before."

Dean shook his head. "See, I don't get that. Seriously, Cas; how does that work?" Angels could move at the speed of thought if they knew where to go, he'd experienced that.

"I do not know, Dean. Part of why we took mortal hosts was to tether us to the earth," he said. "There was always a pull back to our Home. Release concentration, and we were snapped back where we belonged. Only now..."

There apparently was nowhere angels belonged aside from here and now. For once they were all in the same boat.

"Well, that's another question to ask the good prophet Chuck when we catch up with him," Dean said trying to make it sound like a definite plan. They had to carry on with something as if it all had meaning, and he'd never seen Castiel look so lost as he did now. "We'll go into town tomorrow, see if we can find a camping store, get a few of these and some good stuff then head somewhere towards South Dakota, see if we catch up with Chuck, like Ash said."

Sam nodded, and just for a moment, Dean could pretend they were in control, they knew what they were doing and that they had a plan. If he looked at the reality a little closer he would see the tremble of an angel's hand, the way Sam didn't look directly at him even as he talked and the way he had no balance any more, like he was hollow inside, burned out and culled.

But he didn't look. He didn't need to.

"Jess! Shoot the bastard!" Ellen yelled at her, voice angry and urgent.

"It's got a kid!" She didn't have practice in sharpshooting, particularly not in dim light. Her breath huffed in the cold air as she struggled with chilled fingers to get a shot. It was only the journey with Ellen that even had her familiar with guns, but she'd taken to them somehow, not wanting to feel vulnerable any more. The light had gone and she could see the firelight of the camp they had been heading towards, full of excitement at seeing new people, only to stumble into a pitched battle between creatures, too large, unnatural and twisted version of wolves or hounds and the survivors. Hellhounds, Ellen had spat out, her face hard and pinched as she had lead the way into conflict.

"Shit!"

She saw Ellen scramble up onto higher ground and leap at the dog like creature with sickly glowing yellow eyes. It was the most incredibly brave and stupid thing she had ever seen her do, because there were teeth that flashed bone white and razor sharp, snapping shut viciously. It had her running desperately towards the older woman, her indecision vanishing in a rush of fear that she might lose the only guide she had found in this desolation, not just the child the hellhound had seized.

Jess got close and fired as the demonic creature dropped the child to snap at Ellen. She was screaming something in rage that this thing dared to show itself, to go after people here and now when they had survived the end times and were still here. How dare they try to take something as precious as one of the few lives left on the earth? Teeth snapped inches from her face and she just reacted, bringing the shotgun up under its jaw instinctively and pulling the trigger to cause a fountain of black blood and brains, and make the muscled body drop.

Ellen rolled away, breathing heavily. "Nice," she said looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. "Admire the kill later. Is the kid okay?"

"Still breathing," Jess said checking. "Some bleeding here though. We've got to get...him to a..." She trailed off. No doctors anymore. "Someone."

There were still shots coming from the circled vehicles. It was like a small town down there, more life than she had seen in days. "Let's go." Ellen said limping slightly as she reached to pick up the boy. Jess hastily wrapped her scarf around the bitten arm, and checked her gun.

She must've picked up something traveling with Ellen because she managed to flank a group of hound creatures pinning down a group, and fire over and over; doing the reload Ellen had her practice every night they had stopped. _Just in case_ Ellen had said, but Jess had quickly realized that was code for _when you need it_.

It felt familiar now, and there was a surge of adrenalin that carried her through the fight, fierce and removed from anything except the bark and recoil of the gun, cordite tang in the air and thump of an accelerating heartbeat. She'd been at college, she'd never fought against anything and yet, _and yet_, here she was moving with an almost feral enjoyment of the hunt, even as another unfamiliar auburn haired woman from the camp moved with her, following her pattern, firing and shooting with a fluid skill that bespoke years of ingrained practice.

It took a while to come down from the rush of it and she was breathing hard, lungs burning, muscles twitching in her arms from the exertion and the other woman, older but not that much older turned and inclined her head at her in a job well done as she tried to regain her own breath. Belatedly, she realized people were coming out from behind their barriers, wary and twitchy.

"We found one out there with a boy...he's injured but alive," Ellen was saying even as she limped over. "Hope you've got someone who can doctor better than I can."

"Ben! You saved Ben?" A woman who Jess guessed was the boy's mother rushed out to grab him, a touch of hysteria in her voice.

"Lisa, honey, take Ben to Gregory," another woman said, her voice comforting and homey. "And ask Bob if he could dig a grave. Andy has passed in the battle."

"Okay, Missouri," the woman replied, deferring to her in such a way that Jess instinctively knew the black woman was the leader of this group.

"Missouri Moseley?" Ellen said frowning. "I've heard of you."

"Many people have, honey. You are both welcome with us." She fixed her attention on Jess and for a moment Jess had a horrible suspicion that she was focusing on something in the middle of her head, reading it avidly.

"My name is Jess," she said now she had her breath back..

"I know, sweetheart," Missouri said patting her arm. "It seems a pattern is drawing tighter. Goodness, to find the two of you here! Jessica Moore, meet Mary Winchester. "

"Mary Winchester?" Ellen paled a little behind them. "John's wife?"

"You know him?" Mary asked, all focus now even as Jess reeled mentally in shock. Sam's mom. This was Sam's mom who died when he had been young and not in an accident as Sam had told her and she looked... not much older than she was.

"I ran the Roadhouse. For hunters, I knew pretty much all of them." Ellen answered.

"Including my sons?" Mary was asking eagerly. "I never wanted them to be hunters. I didn't want them to follow the family business."

"Didn't know you were a hunter," Ellen said giving a faint shrug. "Guess John didn't know that."

Missouri was still watching her though. "Mary, honey, Jessica here was your Sam's fiancée," she said.

"No, no we weren't actually engaged, I mean.." She'd wanted it. She'd wondered about it, in quiet thoughts in the dead of night, as she smiled to herself watching the ceiling with Sam half snoring beside her. She loved him, with all his quirks and oddities and the gentleness he had surrounding a core of something unbreakable. But they hadn't gotten that far.

"He picked you out a ring. Just waitin' for the right time before that demon sliced you up, burned you and set him on another path." Missouri said.

"You, too?" Mary said. "It happened to you, too?"

She nodded, stunned at the thought there was another one there who knew the terror of being pinned against a ceiling, ripped and burned. There was a connection there between them, a bright moment of kinship from that shared experience alone. "I was at college. I didn't know anything..."

Ellen smirked. "I said that about every college kid I ever met."

Jess smiled a little even as Missouri beckoned them over. "Y'all will stay with us. We have need of you both. It's a crying' shame for folk like these to survive the end and be denied their new beginning. Hunters are protectors at heart."

But that begged a question. "But where are we all going?" Jess asked. South Dakota, that was just a place, it could just as well be here as there.  
Missouri smiled a slow cryptic smile. "Home, honey. We're going home."

"I could tell you how you are going to die." Pamela said to Bella in a very reasonable tone. "If you don't just shut the hell up."

Jo really shouldn't find it funny but she did, she really did. After however many miles and days of dealing with Bella it was good to realize she probably did have the patience of a saint to have managed not to kill her by now.

"Oh please, you would've used that before if you knew," Bella answered airily. "At least I'm not pretending I have all the answers. I'm just working a few things through... out loud."

"We know," Jo said as they led their convoy of survivors Pamela had been collecting down the road. "Should've picked up earplugs back in that last town."

"All I'm saying is that it is pretty important to know who the anti-Christ is," Bella mused. "Maybe it's a red herring, maybe it's not Sam after all but Dean. He broke the first Seal..."

"By being tortured," Jo pointed out. "Not exactly willing. Bella, just give it a rest. "

"Fine if you don't want to know. But I do have a theory." Bella said, and Jo was sure that Pamela was rolling her eyes beneath the shades.

"You could keep it to yourself." Pamela suggested almost hopefully as they rattled along the road. Evening was drawing in and they had been driving most of the day, trying to follow Pamela's guidance about where they should go and avoid the fragments of Hell they came across.

"Now where would be the fun in that?" Bella said sweetly. "I think there is something significant about all of us knowing the Winchesters. You know, I talked to people in your convoy, Pammie. Do you know how many of them are people who met Sam and Dean?"

Jo sighed. "You've said this before Bella, I know it's a lot of them."

"But you're not appreciating the odds!" Bella insisted.

"It's one of those things," Jo said again, trying to get the Englishwoman to drop the subject.

"Why do people insist on making this less than a miracle?" Bella persisted. "Just because I like to calculate odds doesn't make it any less incredible. It means there has to be some significance to it."

"I'll tell you what the goddamn significance is!" Pamela said with heat in her voice, as she gripped the steering wheel tighter. "There isn't a meaning that means anything now. Maybe there was a reason, maybe it's just they hung out with survivor personalities, maybe it doesn't mean shit because we had an apocalypse. "

"We're all heading across country, and you don't want to find a reason?" Bella answered incredulous.

"Look, will you two just shut up a minute?" Jo said peering out of the window down across the plain. "I think we've found them. Look!"

In the twilight, in among the stabbing fires of Hell that punctuated the landscape, there was a steadier more wholesome twinkling of lights. Electric lights, generator lights sparkling, and glowing like a beacon.

"Well, that's a relief, " Bella said. "I was thinking Little Miss Eyeball mirrors here had gotten herself turned around."

"Watch it, puppy chow," Pamela half growled. "Anytime you want to walk, you just keep going."

"Okay, seriously, is that them?" Jo asked leaning forward.

"That's the Prophet's people," the psychic confirmed.

"I don't think we can describe South Dakota as the promised land," Bella replied sardonically, but even she seemed to become more alert at the prospect of meeting people. "If they are even going there."

"They are." Pam said with solid certainty that brooked no doubts.

Jo found herself inexplicably anxious and even excited as they pulled up towards the outer perimeter of the camp. A hastily erected sign with a scrawled 'Chuckville' on it seemed to prove Pamela's theory and Jo found herself wondering maybe her mother was alive and here, or even… even her dad. She barely remembered him now, he was more the absence of dad in her life, but still she wondered.

They were expected it seemed. A whole host of people were waiting; some curious, some wary, some looking at them with the same mixture of anticipation and anxiety that she was feeling wondering maybe if the people they were trailing along behind them were lost loved ones.

Pamela slowed the truck and then parked up, getting out. Jo and Bella jumped out and Jo just caught some of the comments from the crowd around them, loud whispers and muttering.

"Is it the Righteous Man? Is he come?"

"Don't be an idiot, you know what Walker said. The Prophet said it would be those who were part of their story."

Jo was starting to feel pretty unrighteous as they were crowded around, not giving them time to get settled in even as their convoy pulled up behind them, vehicle by vehicle.

"Hey Jo!" A familiar figure pushed through the crowd. "Out the way man, Jo and I go way back."

The shock of seeing Ash there standing there alive, mullet hair and all, in his grunge rock t-shirt hit Jo suddenly with what this really meant. She'd known Bella and Pamela were Lazarus folk, but she'd known Ash for years. He'd been like a weird sort of older brother who had stayed at the Roadhouse so long that he made an anchor point for her. When she'd heard he was dead she'd felt a personal bereavement and now... now he was standing in front of her. Suddenly she actually felt what it meant for the dead to have come back, rather than thinking about it and it gave her a wild hope of seeing her dad again, and her mom too if something had happened to her.

"Hey Ash. Expecting us?" Jo asked as nonchalantly as she could, though she was unable to stop the smile.

"Dude, you were lucky Chuck didn't allow me to leave you guys messages in fire, to get you to hurry up." Ash said with a grin. "Chuck's coming to see you. He's cool."

"I'd hate to have an uncool Prophet of the Almighty," Bella said sweetly. "How could you ever take someone with no fashion sense seriously as the mouthpiece of God?"

Jo glanced at her warningly. Bella never knew when to stop poking at things and it wasn't just them anymore. There were people here who had bought into the full religious fervour associated with following a proven Prophet of God.

"Way to look for a short lifespan," Pam said and then abruptly turned as if catching a glimpse out of the corner of her eye.

Jo followed her gaze but couldn't see anyone who fitted her idea of a prophet of God. In fact all she could see was a pretty non-descript guy in ratty jeans and if he was sporting any type of robe it was a worse for wear bathrobe flung over a t-shirt. The only indication of his importance was the way people respectfully made way for him.

And Pamela's rather odd reaction.

"Oh no. No, seriously, you've got to be kidding me," the psychic said in an incredulous tone as he approached.

He shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the rest of them and going up to her. "Sorry, it's what is written," he said waving a couple of pieces of paper.

A few of the group called out, "It is written!" and Jo saw Chuck wince at the evidence of their zealousness.

"Okay guys, we don't have to do that," he said mildly. "Hi." He waved a little to them all. "We've been waiting for you to catch up. I wrote it this morning. I've been waiting to meet you, Pamela." He seemed oddly nervous from the way he kept fiddling with his straggly hair.

"No way." Pamela said flatly. "No way."

"I knew you'd say that," Chuck said almost apologetically. "And I also knew what you Saw when you first saw me."

Jo was amazed. It had to be a trick of the twilight but there seemed to be a fading blush on the psychic's face.

"There is no way that is happening," Pamela said firmly. "In your fucking dreams."

"Well, it kinda was," Chuck said with an apologetic shrug. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't wish fulfillment considering I wrote this conversation happening, too. You better take a look." He handed her the sheaf of papers.

"What's the big deal?" Jo asked, even as Bella moved in trying to catch glimpse of what was scribbled down.

"I think we're witness to a psychics' dick waving match," she said smiling with amusement at Pamela and then did a very annoying fake voice. "_'Oooo my prediction is bigger than yours.'_"

"You don't know what you're talking about." Pamela said, reading Chuck's prophecy intently. The flush of color to her cheeks was definitely noticeable and then as she neared the end of it, she started laughing.

"I knew you'd like that bit," Chuck said with a faint smile. "So…what do you think?"

"Well, I don't seem to have a choice," Pam said.

"No, no…there are always choices. Dean showed me that. He's the one who showed me prophecy was a tool not a dictate," Chuck said hastily. "Won't you give it a try?"

Pam nodded slowly. "Fine. A try. If it weren't for my own Sight, I would be dropkicking you over into the nearest piece of Hell."

"Don't worry, I know how lucky I am. " He took her hand. "Come on." They seemed to be oblivious to everyone around them and Pamela absentmindedly shoved the sheets at Jo, much to Bella's annoyance. Even as Chuck and Pamela walked away from them all, Jo glanced down at the top sheet.

_"…the moment she saw him dressed in a nondescript and unpleasant looking bathrobe, something clicked into place. Inside her mind, a harmony flowed out of her senses, once wielded as devastatingly as a blade, reaching for the sense of him and finding a symphony of welcome. That part of her, in defiance to all common knowledge or even her own preferences announced that here was the one she had been waiting for, and in her own mind, she heard the echo of his talent whispering the same. But how could this be? She was not the type to fall in love at first or second sight. If she was, then surely she would've fallen for one of the Winchesters, not a cheap hack writer inexplicably given the word of God…"_

Jo blinked.

"Oh! Oh this is just wonderful!" Bella exclaimed crowing with delight as she read over her shoulder. "It's like…fan fiction. Tortured angsty psychics together falling inexplicably in love. It must be the Will of God, either that, or a Mary Sue! Pretty much one and the same thing, if you ask me. I wonder if it details exactly what they get up to?"

She practically snatched the papers from her to continue reading. "Bella!" Jo said irritated and scrabbling for the last piece, which had floated to the ground.

"Oh come on, like you don't like to see miss prissy psychic pants meet her soul mate who is as wet as she is hard," Bella said. She considered what she had just said. "In a non-sexual fashion I hope."

"They probably can still hear you!" Jo said warningly

"Yes, well, whatever," Bella said scanning the paragraph of handwritten script. "Blah, blah blah destiny, eternity… give me the last page, where the action hots up."

"We **can** still hear you," a voice called out from Chuck's trailer.

"Yeah, well whatever…" Bella said still reading. "You carry on hooking up or doing a mind meld, whatever you do in lieu of foreplay."

"I'm just waiting for the moment when you find out what destiny and eternity have in store for you," Pamela called out.

"What?"

Jo read over her shoulder now, intrigued.

_"….she had never looked for love, and she wasn't looking now, but even as she laughed at the expense of Pamela, she became aware of a presence behind her. Initially irritated, Bella turned, her instinct to tell whoever it was to back the hell away dying on her lips as she stared into eyes that showed a keen mind, a match for her own, a kind hesitant smile and the moment he spoke, she was lost…"_

"Er... Hi," Ash said behind them.

For days afterwards, Jo only had to think of Bella's expression then and she would nearly laugh herself sick.


	4. Chapter 4

_When the swords clashed, he could feel it, the air tight and rippling around him alive with energy. The more he looked, the more he could see their angelic forms burning through the hosts' skin. Dean's face was disturbingly like a semi-translucent Halloween mask, and the archangel's visage shone through, even as Lucifer's terrible beauty shone through that of his host. But he could look and not be blinded, listen and not go deaf to their forms and words._

He looked upon two of the mightiest of God's creations and saw their real forms, heard their real voices that touched and destroyed things of mere matter around them. But he wasn't matter here and now, he was sacrifice, something paid or taken, but the result was the same. Beneath him a sword of stars railed the fire of a thousand brilliant suns upon the blade containing the hunger of a multitude of black hole singularities, deadlocked, unrelenting. It was battle that lasted an instant and an eternity. Time was twisting here, decades in a second, a heartbeat taking years. Around them the Apocalypse swirled and he knew then across the world, as time danced and lurched drunkenly the dead returned, and the boundaries between Heaven and Hell opened, spilling onto the earth the Lazarus dead. And there was a War in the skies, on the surface of the earth that could not be stopped.

All of that, and he wondered how much of his brother would be left, because holy crap, the power directed at his body was immense. How much would the angel leave him even if he survived?

"You are slow, brother," Lucifer said softly. "Slow and weak. You do not ask why, you simply fight."

"I am an angel of the Lord, His Word that cannot be broken," Michael answered, cleaving at him with all his strength and Sam struggled to be heard over the tornado winds that whirled every time they sliced through air with their celestial blades.

Dean, he called over and over, Dean! But the words were eaten by the roaring winds and still he was held pinioned in midair.

"And so you call me the Lie, as you see me as a broken word," Lucifer said again. "What I did, you do not understand. I was the truest of you all and for that I am Enemy, your Great Adversary. You do not understand, Michael. I was His most favored and for that he gave me the greatest and cruelest of gifts. I was the First of his creation to be able to Love. He so Loved me, he wished it returned and the wonder of it, Michael, I cannot explain. It is not adulation, it is not obedience and... I gloried in it and Him. But true love is jealous and wild, Michael. How was I to know why I needed Him to look to me with attention? None had Loved before... none had needed so painfully desperately to have and hold for eternity."

"Liar, and Father of Lies!" Michael declaimed but his words lacked some conviction. "We are created from our Father's Love!"

"But I love from myself, for love is the heart of free will and that I have. And I still love Him now, though I have suffered for it," Lucifer answered, his ages old pain still fresh in his voice. "Suffered in a way you will not understand. I do not reject God, I wish him to be Mine. He created me like this, he gave me this purpose and now I am free, I will not be rejected again though I have to storm the Gates of Heaven and lay waste to his precious creation that drew him from me. He shall see me and know I have been tested and endured for Him!"

Crazy, the Devil was crazy. Sam could see it clearly, once a bright wonderful thing, too bright, too wonderful and twisted into something an angel could not deal with and remain sane. There was a tragedy there because Sam could feel the resonance of truth there in his words and the obsession that drove the ruler of Hell to challenge Heaven. It was a story that had played out on the earth thousands of times a day –' If I can't have you then no one will... '

Michael faltered, then, and Lucifer, the morning and the evening star, struck at him, wounding him badly on his side. Blood fell, crimson and starlight from the wound, but even as Lucifer laughed, Michael thrust back matching him wound for wound.

Finesse and civility abandoned, they whirled into the air, wings of emerald fire flickering on the edge of vision, eclipsed by feathers of night and universe sky. Swords became lightning, became spears, became weapon after weapon, as they spun in a yin yang of never ending battle.

Sam could barely see Dean. There was a light where he was, something almost too bright to see like the heart of an atomic bomb, or a supernova, but somehow, somehow after an eternity, Lucifer was down, beneath Michael's foot, and a spear leveled at his throat.

"You are defeated, brother," Michael exulted, though he bled from many wounds. "The victory is ours."

Lucifer laughed and Sam's neck prickled. There was a madness there, a desperation. He recognized it because he'd been there. Give anything, take anything because I'm at the end of where I can be and so I have nothing to lose…__

In his mind he could hear the memory of Dean turning to him and saying, "I'm done," with utter weariness and despair.

"Then know now, your victory shall be as ashes. For if I cannot have Him, then no one shall!" And he turned and spoke a Word, an Abomination, and terror filled Sam because instinctively he knew it was wrong, it was not meant to happen. This was a choice that should never have been made and better that Heaven fell and Hell took dominion than that Word be spoken.

"What have you done?! Lucifer, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" Michael staggered back staring into space next to Sam. Something crawled across the air, a... nothingness as if a thread had been pulled in the fabric of space and time and now it unraveled.

"There shall be no greater love than mine, not in the universe. For now it shall end, and He shall end with it," Lucifer said his eyes burning with. "I did not want his Throne, I wanted his Love and instead of returning it, He left and now our suffering will end! It is too late to stop it!"

Michael had backed away, the horror evident in his face, dropping the sword and abruptly Dean's body sagged, emptied of its angelic possessor, dropping to his knees in front of Lucifer.

The nothingness was growing, twisting and turning in capillaries of destruction that snaked out in three dimensions that he could see, and more that he was sure he could not. Lucifer glanced at it and laughed, a bitter almost hysterical laugh.

"The Omega. There is no going back."

"You…fucking…bastard," Dean managed and even then Sam felt a surge of relief Dean was still Dean, still alive if bleeding. "You fucking selfish bastard! What kind of petty shit are you?"

"You wouldn't understand," Lucifer said as Sam felt the universe beginning a slow inexorable collapse.

"Like hell I wouldn't!" Dean yelled hoarsely. "Whatever happens, you are going down and you are damn well giving back my brother!"

Lucifer laughed wildly, right up to the point where Dean grasped hold of Michael's sword and nearly screamed as it flamed. But he didn't let go, he looked at Sam, meeting his eyes and then dragged himself up, still burning, lightning snapping around him, doing the impossible because that was what Dean did every damn time. Lucifer was so shocked at a mortal even daring to approach him that he missed the lunge Dean made, straight for his heart, only just bringing up his sword to run through Dean's side as the sword of Michael slid into his chest..

Sam dropped to the floor, stunned by the impact, free again even as Lucifer burned away with a howl of loss and Dean collapsed, with a mortal wound from a celestial sword still embedded in his body.

And around him the universe died even as Dean whispered, "Sammy…" just once before closing his eyes.

"Sam. Sam, you must wake." Castiel was talking to him with some urgency, and he snapped to consciousness, still in shitty room they had found for this particular night.

"Wha, wait…" Sam sat up abruptly, disorientated and sweating hard. "What's going on? "

"Your shared vision is causing Dean pain," Castiel said sitting back. "He recalls it as if it were happening, and so does his body. "

"Shit, is he…" Sam felt sick. He couldn't stop these dreams, they were out of his hands, and if Dean was feeling what was happening why hadn't he said before?.

"He can hear you," Dean said, sounding much like he did when he'd been out drinking all night and was rough around the edges. "I told you to leave it, Cas."

"But you were in pain," Castiel said looking over his shoulder at Dean who was sprawled on the make shift bed, pressing fresh dressings to his side.

"I'm a big boy, Cas, even compared to the family giant over there," Dean answered tersely. "I can deal with it."

"But you shouldn't have to. Why didn't you say something, Dean?" Sam demanded, as guilt washed over him. "If this is some misguided attempt at punishing yourself…"

There it was; the barest hint that there was at least an element of that going on, just from the way Dean looked away. "I wanted to know what was going on as well, Sam. You're not the only one with a hole in your memory. Just… forgetting was kinda less painful."

Sam was sure that remembering that, remembering dying was something that Dean shouldn't have to do again. His brother was an idiot. "Maybe we should stop trying to figure out what happened."

Dean looked at him in amazement. "Yeah, that's going to work," he said sarcastically. "Just turn off your brain, and everything will be fine."

"I do not believe that you will be able to stop," Castiel added. "What is it that you saw?"

"Cas is stopping the peeking into thoughts thing, at least until I persuade him it's okay," Dean said waving a hand, the color coming back to his face slowly. "Whole Lucifer Michael showdown. Apparently the whole thing, this whole goddamn apocalypse was over a possessive jealous snit by Lucifer that God was his one true whatever."

"He released something he called the Omega," Sam said. It was raining outside after days of bitter ash laden hot wind, and he could hear the rumble of distant thunder. Dogs were howling out of the window, lonely for owners who had burned to ash. He had a feeling this storm had been brewing a long time. He shook his head and then realized that Castiel had almost literally staggered back in horror at the mere mention of the word.

"No. This cannot be true," he stated as if that would make it so. The angel actually had to sit down, made pale with shock and fear. "There is not one of us who could think of such a thing. It's... impossible!"

"Lucifer made some pretty big hints that he had been God's first experiment in Love as I guess humans have it. Maybe it really did make him different," Sam said awkwardly. He couldn't help feeling a degree of empathy for the fallen angel. The alienation and feeling of strangeness had meant when he met Jess and his normal life, then it had seemed so infinitely precious to him, it had been worth walking away from Dean, from Dad. He could only assume that Lucifer had been driven to such extreme straits by the unaccustomed torment of unrequited love.

"You do not understand," Castiel told them, his dark eyes actually fearful. "The Omega is the province of God. A means to end all things. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End."

"Like a big red button?" Dean asked flippantly though Sam knew his brother well enough to know he was covering for something.

"An apocalypse though a tragedy is but one world, Dean," Castiel answered seriously. "But the Omega is the end of **everything**. I do not understand. Are you sure that is what he did, that it actually started?"

"Definitely," Sam confirmed, nodding in emphasis. He wasn't going to forget that feeling of complete and utter wrongness in a hurry. "Things were... unraveling around us."

"Then it is a miracle that it ceased," the angel said. "How did that occur?"

"Got me," Dean said. "I was last seen in Sam's vision, pretty much bleeding out with Lucifer's sword in my gut after I killed him. I got my smite on." His grin covered a wince as he moved.

"Can you heal him?" Sam asked, as he watched his brother try to move. "Cas? I mean.. no wonder it hasn't healed right if this is happening." He was responsible for that, like he was for a lot of the crap that his brother had been through. So far though, he was more than aware that his own part in proceedings had been hanging there like bait on a hook, and no damn use to either side, after all the buildup.

"I am still weak, but I will try," Castiel agreed immediately. "For I believe we draw close to our destination and the Prophet."

Dean looked at him and closed his eyes. "Great, just great. So we're going to have to deal with that, too. What the hell are we going to do when we get to Bobby's anyway? We're all heading there because, hey, he knows about demons and angels and has the lore pretty sewn up, but we've got Cas here as well and it's not like we can turn back time and make everything unhappen."

"Unless we found a Trickster," Sam pointed out. "You'd think that would work?"

"No, it would not," Castiel said, knocking back his sudden hope. "Tricksters do not change the whole world. They make a pocket of reality and within it, their will dominates."

"Still, if the Big Guy is absent, then maybe we need to look elsewhere for solutions," Dean replied still pointedly keeping his eyes closed.

What happened next, Sam wasn't exactly sure because it happened in a blur. The door burst open and a group of men -- hunters -- came in, firing at all of them. Unlike with their venture into Hell, the protective instinct bypassed the conscious mind and he raised his hand and in an echo of Alistair's ability stopped the bullets midair. It didn't feel the same though; it didn't have that sharp metallic wrongness about it that gave him a foul taste in his mind. It was strong and clear, golden liquid light flowing through his body to pool in his fingers, humming with power.

Dean had struggled to his feet and was reaching for his own gun, a little stunned that their assailants were effectively left powerless. Sam was pretty damn stunned himself, holding the bullets there like something out of a movie.

"Didn't anyone tell you to knock?" Dean growled. His eyes narrowed. "I know you. Hunters, all of you."

One of them spat at him. "Winchester. We know what you did. You started this."

Dean didn't flinch from the accusation. "You expect me to deny it?" he said in a low rough voice.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Sam said instantly to support his brother.

"And you're a tool of the devil himself." Fear made the hunter's worlds harsh and accusatory. "Walker told us how you were the anti-Christ, and he weren't lying. Stopping bullets with a wave of your hand, eyes glowing golden…"

Golden? That was a change. He lowered his hand and the bullets pattered to the floor, a metallic rain.

"Harris." Dean said focusing in on the man. "Me and Dad saved your ass in that town in Maine. …hell, Chris, man, remember the Ice Witch up near Alaska? All of you, there's not one of you that the Winchesters haven't helped out some time or another."

"Nothing worse than a good hunter going bad," one of them said -- Chris apparently, Sam didn't know him and it made him feel those missing years at Stanford keenly. Somehow he hadn't really connected the fact that Dean had been hunting in that time with actual people and hunts. They were abstract thoughts in his head, not real things.

"The apocalypse is your fault, the pair of you. Nothing we've heard gives us reason to think otherwise," Harris added. They were all looking for an opening, a weak spot. None of them had missed Dean's injury for a start.

"Then you will listen to me." Castiel said stepping forward. "I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord. These men have been a part of God's will and you have no comprehension of the purpose they have served."

Dean groaned. "You know, Cas, that's not helping. They don't give a shit about why, just that it happened."

"You got that right," Harris answered and the hatred was clear in his expression. "Figure you should pay for it."

"Okay, look guys," Sam tried. "So not the time for any of this. I could just…" He flexed his hand and felt the power sing but held it.

Dean shook his head. "No Sam. That ain't going to stop them coming. Gonna make it worse." He turned back to the lynch mob. "You know about Chuck? The Prophet?"

"He is the voice of God," one of the others said fervently and Sam could see the irony in the fact Castiel's attempt at explanation was not sufficient, but the word of a man was more important.

"Then Sam here won't do anything and we'll come with you, and see what the Prophet says. He kinda made a prophecy we'd meet up," Dean said.

Sam couldn't believe he was hearing this. Dean was effectively giving them up without a fight, and he could so easily get them away. But if there was one thing that he'd learned from this whole crappy business, Dean might occasionally be goofy, seemingly idiotic and not giving a shit about being normal, but his instincts about conflict were sharp and somehow dead on even in defiance of common sense.

The hunters did look a little like they couldn't believe their luck. "You're coming with us," Harris declared like he had personally captured them.

Dean shrugged and looked casual. "Whatever, dude. In the morning, and we'll be taking the Impala. One of you can ride along if you're worried we're going to take off."

It was almost hilarious; the looks of consternation on their faces, much like someone confronting a man-eating tiger only to have it roll over and purr at them.

"Okay," Harris said. "Uh, we'll just.." He looked at Castiel, who had been doing the angel stare thing that gave the impression he was reading the inside of his head, and shifted uncomfortably. "We'll just take the perimeter. Don't even think about escaping."

"We'll do that," Dean said even giving them a little wave as they filed out into the rain again. The moment the door was closed he started to snort with laughter, clutching his side to stop it moving too much.

"…Dude, that has to be the most lame-ass lynching party I've ever seen," he said.

"Dean, seriously, we can give them the slip, it's not like people elsewhere would know," Sam started, just wanting to keep Dean safe. It shouldn't be as tough a job as it actually ended up being. "And, I really could… you know."

"Yeah, I know you could, and that's why we're not going down that road." Dean said and looked at him. "I don't want us being… monsters, Sam. "

That hit a sore point with him, and when he met Dean's eye he knew it was meant to. He'd deliberately tugged on that nerve and it hit the bull's-eye. Better dead than a monster. Better anything than that.

"We're going with them. It's the only way to clear our name. And that's pretty much all we have left," Dean said. "Like it or not, Chuck has authority now and these guys know where he is so… " He shrugged. "Guess we catch some more sleep."

"I guess." Sam didn't like it. Their experiences of trusting other people didn't have a good track record. "I don't know if we can trust them to see the truth."

"Then we'll run, but we might as well have an escort now, otherwise we're going to be watching our backs for the rest of our lives," Dean replied. "That's not what I wanted for you…or Cas."

Castiel looked at him with a faint look of surprise to be included in Dean's statement, but Sam didn't miss the deliberate omission of himself that Dean made. He knew what that meant, but he still didn't know how to fight it. He had access to his power again, and it was **his** this time, not some demon blood mockery, and he fizzed with the possibilities that he could just fix things somehow.

The obvious thing at the moment was he just wasn't going to get that chance right now because Dean was turning over and settling down again so he did the same. Castiel was…being Castiel, watching them both.

"Sam?" Dean said after he'd spent a few minutes listening to the rain lashing the windows.

"Yeah, Dean?" he answered.

"Sweet Dreams. That's an order."

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Dean wasn't without some degree of uncertainty about what he had suggested as a plan. He was worried about Sam, because no way in hell was the glowing golden eyes -- not yellow, he was adamant that they weren't yellow -- were a sign that he'd gone back to normal. He remembered that yellow shade exactly from when Azazel was in his father's body ripping his insides around and from when he'd stared the sonuvabitch in the eye and shot him with the Colt, and Sam was nothing like that.

Dean wasn't sure he was that normal anymore either. Swords appearing out of nowhere, sharing his brother's dreams (which was frankly more than a bit suspect and skeevy), even the equivalent of fucking psychosomatic injuries as Sam couldn't seem to stop thinking of him as some sort of sacrificial victim. It really wasn't helpful, and even Cas was looking at them both a bit funnily as they were 'escorted' to wherever Chuck's merry band was hiding.

Truth was, Dean knew he was taking a gamble. If they ran now, they would be running all their lives from both sides. Left over demons, angels, whatever, and any other folks who would end up spitting when they said the name Winchester, or say their nightly prayers calling upon the Almighty to protect them from the unholy Winchester trinity of John, Sam and Dean. If they stayed, they needed to avoid the whole lynching thing by revealing exactly what had happened after that battle, because right now it still looked like they were instrumental in not just bringing down damnation on their world, but all worlds as well.

Like he needed more guilt.

He kept waiting, almost bracing himself for Sam's next vision, but in this whole journey, nothing.

"We're here," Harris said gesturing to them all to get out. "I'm warning you, one wrong move…"

"Yeah, yeah. Let's just go." Sam's impatience was palpable, and Dean needed him to play it calmly. He tried to give him a look, but Sam was already distracted by the sights and smells of a group of humanity living together. He could smell something cooking, wood smoke like someone was having a cook out. Coffee, he could smell that and fresh bread... nothing could replace that scent. It was incredible, people could just find ways to carry on living and find normality even at the end of the world. There were even dogs running up to meet them yapping hopefully, wagging their tails and not taking guard duty that seriously.

Cas just got out of the car looking more perplexed than anything about the way they were being treated. Dean was pretty sure that the hunters didn't believe he was an actual angel, if only because he wasn't doing anything particularly angelic aside from sitting there with that superhuman stillness and attention.

"Chill, dude," he said to his brother as they stepped out of the car. "Chuck'll sort it out."

"I hope so." There was an undercurrent of _he'd better_, because it was a stupid plan. And maybe it was, but it was the best way Dean had to approach it. He didn't want to spend the rest of the apocalypse looking over his shoulder; he wanted Sam and the others to have some sort of life that didn't involve being public enemy number one.

There was a welcoming committee of hunters he recognized, and curious bystanders. It was just their luck that Gordon Walker and Kubrik were there, and if anything he was willing to bet they were behind this hunting party.

"Harris! What the hell are you doing bringing them back here?" Walker bellowed out, leveling a shotgun at them all. Wow, he was really pissed and Dean could see he wasn't messing around. Harris might as well have dumped six-foot rattlesnakes in front of him, the way he was looking at the three of them. Problem was, he wasn't sure he would be any different if roles were reversed. Who the hell would want the guys last seen raising Lucifer and starting the apocalypse in their back yard?

"Hey, we're here to see Chuck." Sam stepped forward, hands at a mid-point towards heading up in the air. At least he wasn't glowing or anything anymore, he just looked a bit shaggy and worn around the edges but that was hardly surprising.

"I bet you are," Walker replied, almost spitting the words out and Dean could understand a little bit of his hatred as Sam had decapitated him the last time they had crossed paths. He figured that might not make him particularly well disposed to the Winchester brothers.

"Come to finish the job," Kubrik said and he was as old and crazy as ever, his crucifix displayed proudly and Dean was willing to bet he was on a hair trigger to throw holy water over them all. "Told ya he was the anti-Christ. "

The crowd stirred uneasily, and Dean couldn't really blame them. If it weren't obvious from their proudly displayed Chuckville sign, these people were clinging to the prophet as a means of making sense of this whole thing. Any threat to him was likely to get them lynched or burned at the stake and he wasn't looking for that right now.

"Hey, Chuck and us, we go way back," Dean said as charmingly as he could manage considering they were surrounded by people pointing guns at them. "We wouldn't hurt the guy."

"He knows us," Sam agreed, still standing warily. "We just want to talk to him." And then see where things went from there.

"We know he knows you, and for some reason he wants to see the best in you. But he hasn't been able to See anything that doesn't convince us that you two were responsible for the apocalypse, starting, finishing or whatever," Walker said with a definite accusing tone in his voice. "Give me one reason why I don't shoot you here and now."

"Because that's not going to help. We came here willingly, okay?" Dean said. "We haven't caused trouble."

"We could have," Sam added, which Dean guessed he was entitled to do and probably needed to be said just to prove the point, "but we don't want to. We're just here to see Chuck." And they sort of were responsible. They'd let Lucifer do his crazy Omega shit. Dean was beginning to think they were the masters of being too little, too late.

"No way in hell," Gordon replied and looked about ready to fire, finger flexing over the trigger of his gun.

"You do that, Gordon, and Chuck will have you thrown out," a voice said, and Jo stepped into view. "Hey, Sam, Dean."

Jo. For some reason he wasn't expecting her and he gaped for far too long before he pulled himself together enough to reply. "Uh, hey Jo."

"Jo!" Sam startled forward, like he wanted to rush her but he was half-aware of Gordon still training the gun on them all. "It's good to see you! Who else is here...? Is your mom okay?"

"She's not here, but we've got Pamela and.." She glanced over at Dean. "Bella."

"Bella?" Dean couldn't help himself. No matter what Cas said about inevitability, destiny and purpose, the niggling thought remained that hey, if Bella hadn't sold the Colt, he could've avoided this whole goddamn mess. "That bitch... where is she?"

Castiel put his hand on his shoulder stopping in his tracks. He had a grip like a damn mountain landing on his shoulder.

"Dean, this is not a time for further confrontation." He murmured it low, and while it didn't make Dean want to punch Bella out any less, he could wait on it. For a few seconds.

"Pamela came back?" Sam seemed a little happy, a little confused.

"Lazarus dead all over. Lot of them familiar faces to you guys," Jo said folding her arms. "Chuck's on his way, I just thought I'd come over and make sure these guys don't break the rules of no fighting or killing within the perimeter."

That was useful to know. Dean half grinned a bit at Jo, who was looking pretty good truth be told, and was about to say something when she said.

"That goes for you two as well. No killing."

"Hey, we're just here to see Chuck and... you guys are the first sign of humanity we've seen." Because neither of them wanted to count Cas, and Dean wasn't sure either of them needed to be counting themselves, either.

He was trying to be pleasant and charming, but there was an edge of grimness to most of the survivors crowding around.

"So uh, has Chuck said anything about us?" he asked hopefully.

"Not really," Jo said. "We know about the lead up, but he hasn't said anything about the very end there."

Dammit.

"Look, we're still sort of piecing together what happened ourselves," Sam said slowly. "But we're here to try to figure out exactly what happened and what we can do now that things have changed."

Dean became aware of a muttering around them, and he was starting to get the feeling this had been a monumentally bad idea even as he saw a familiar figure... two familiar figures coming towards them, and standing pretty damn intimately close.

"Chuck and Pamela?" he said looking over at Sam. "Did not see that one coming."

"Hey Sam, Dean, glad you got here," Chuck said pleasantly enough. "We've been waiting until you got here."

"Waiting for...?" Sam threw a big smile while Dean just hoped that they hadn't been waiting to hold a big bonfire, because they'd just gotten Castiel out of one.

"So we can get to South Dakota," Chuck replied while Pamela was staring at Castiel, peering over her shades and Dean could catch a glimpse of silvery weird eyes not the black burnt out pits he had flinched from. She'd obviously come back different as well.

"You know, I think I prefer you like this," she said to the angel. "Not burning out my eyeballs."

"He really is an angel?" Harris asked, looking a little horrified. Not surprising, really, considering they purported to be religious and had been talking shit about them for the last few days.

"Yes." Castiel stepped forward from behind Dean, which made him seem less like the Angel in their pocket. "Though the battle took much from me."

"More the whole capturing by Lucifer and subsequent torture," Dean said figuring a bit of sympathy would do more than protestations.

"I can see that," Pamela replied, pushing her shades back on. "Guess what goes around comes around, huh?"

"So, look we've got a problem," Chuck said talking to them both. "Jury's still out on exactly what happened -- I've got up to the last vision by Sam... pretty cool, Sam, by the way, but we've gotta keep you around until we know for sure. But no one is going to hurt you. By my order."

"Great." It didn't feel like trust, at all, and Sam turned to Dean with a look that screamed _'are you fucking kidding me'_, because they couldn't really expect them to hang around if they expected to be lynched by the end as the scapegoats for it all, especially when Chuck sounded like he couldn't order a pizza let alone make commands that could save lives.

"We'll stay. But if someone comes at us, we're not going to be turning the other cheek." Dean warned him. He didn't want any of them having to stand there as convenient punching bags.

"Don't worry, guys, I reckon we're going to find out pretty soon, then I'll read it to everyone. Then they'll know it's the truth," Chuck assured them as if it was that easy. "You get that, everybody? No one is to hurt any of them, and if someone goes after Sam, Dean or Castiel, don't come crying to me if they kick you on your butt."

A confused, tight expression crossed over Castiel's face, and Sam cupped his shoulder briefly. "Just leave it to us if anything happens."

"This is not right that they should treat you with such suspicion," Castiel said. "Do they not know what you have done for them?"

"I reckon they think they do," Dean said. After all the time Castiel had spent with them, he was still amazed at how naive he could be about human nature. "And that's the problem. You know? I'm not even going to try and change their minds. Chuck'll do that. Let's see if we can get some decent food. Sam's cooking sucks."

"Here's an idea: you could learn to cook if you're going to complain about it." Dean caught himself grinning when Sammy griped, and he slapped his shoulder. Fresh bread, seriously…they should be able to score some of that.

"Jo will show you our set up," Chuck said. "I've got some writing to do, but I'll see you guys later."

Dean nodded even as Jo approached with a faint smirk. "Come on guys. Got a few people who you might be interested in seeing again. And wait until I tell you about Ash and Bella..."

"Ash and Bella?" He caught the linking of the names there and hell, it was worth walking into the lion's den just to hear about that. Even as they followed Jo, he had a smirk that refused to leave his expression.

It was funny how the extraordinary soon developed its own version of mundane tedium. Here they were, survivors of the end days, their groups swelling with every area they passed through and they already had a routine. Mary and a few hunters they picked up around the way would scout around the route ahead, finding areas of Hell or Heaven and figuring a clear route for the others. They had people guarding the back of the convoy, leaving signs pointing towards South Dakota, they had groups under guard scavenging supplies or going to fetch people Missouri could sense. Mary was reminded a little of the old series _Wagon Train_, and how it was like a mobile town, full of its own dramas and humanity.

She'd been getting to know a lot more about her sons and her husband since Jess and Ellen had arrived, and Jessica was turning out to have good instincts and reflexes and most of all an open mind. That was essential to making a good hunter. She listened to her stories of Sam at Stanford, feeling a surge of hope and joy that he had done what she had so desperately wanted and gotten out. Done good as well, and privately decided that yes, Jessica was daughter-in-law material. She'd been a bit shocky to start with, Ellen had said to her privately, a bit distant and vague but when the chips were down, she snapped into focus and saved lives. Didn't shirk from taking action either.

Mary had enough of her parents in her to hold that up as a marker of whether she was worthwhile or not.

Ellen had been a little evasive with her, right up to the point that Missouri had casually dropped into conversation that, "It ain't adultery when a wife's dead. Men and women have needs that don't go away because a partner ain't there."

From that she correctly deduced that Ellen had slept with John, maybe more than once and if she was jealous, it wasn't because she had done something wrong, but because it was something she should've had time to experience everything she heard about. From Ellen she coaxed out stories around one of the many watch fires that they set when the nights were cold and clear. She learned about how John Winchester who came past the Roadhouse regularly, telling stories to her daughter, hunting with her husband. She learned how her husband became a big name among the hunters, him and his boys.

Her boys. Every time, she mentally changed it to _her boys_.

Her clearest memories were of a precocious four year old Dean, who was into everything, made her laugh with his observations, idolized his father and was not too old to hug his mom, and was very excited about being a big brother to her beautiful baby Sam. It was hard to reconcile that with stories of how the Winchesters had cleared out a nest of vampires on their own, tackled shadow demons, evil spirits that would've made her dad raise his eyebrows and be grudgingly impressed.

Her boys, her husband, had become bigger names in the world she had forsaken than Sam and Deana Campbell had ever been. They were legends, and she was the mother of legends, and she didn't know what to feel about that. She'd never wanted that for them, and any pride was tinged with dismay and a growing sense of anger.

"Mary, girl." Missouri came and sat beside her staring into the fire. "You haven't come down to the main camp for a few nights. You're brooding."

"You know, Missouri, so what if I am?" Mary said, staring at the flames. The nights held a chill, now and huddling around a campfire alone was a cold isolated experience. "I've been hearing things about my family that I… I don't know what to do with. It's not like I can ask anyone about it. I'm trying to understand that my husband… Sam and Dean grew up even more immersed than I did, and I know what that felt like. The hunts, the injuries? Who looked after them when John was hunting? Who looked after any of them? Shouldn't hunt alone, that's a short trip to an early grave."

"John did the best he could," Missouri said in a low voice. "He saved a lot of people. They all did, honey."

"But my sons, Sammy, Dean…" She shook her head, not knowing how to express the shock she felt.

"Are they a disappointment to you, Mary?" Missouri asked. "You're thinking of the children you knew."

"I don't know them anymore, do I?" Mary said after a long pause in a low voice.

"No, honey, you don't. But that don't mean they're not people worth knowing," Missouri said. She exhaled. "Let me tell you a little bit about them. John came to me after your murder, Mary, and he was broken, broken into pieces, because he was used to fighting and protecting and didn't get that there were things out there he didn't know how to fight. He came looking for answers and all I could give him was more questions and a choice of paths to travel."

"But Dean and Sam didn't have that choice," Mary interrupted. "Did they?"

"No, honey, they didn't. Dean…" The psychic sighed. "Dean is proof that even with Sight such as mine, I can get it wrong. When they came to see me, all grown up, I looked at Dean and I could feel recklessness and death on him. I was hard on him, Mary, harder than maybe I should've been. I was seeing a deal with the devil and foolishly I thought only those with selfish intent would do that. "

Mary flushed, thinking of her own deal. "I… I…"

"Sweetheart, like I said, I was wrong. I was so focused on the power that I could feel coming from Sam, I overlooked Dean." Missouri said. "The strength in that boy, whew…" She shook her head. "Dean has a different kind to Sam, but just as special. You need to be proud of them, Mary, because Sam and Dean have done so many impossible things, but a word from you… would finish them both."

Mary contemplated, that mulling it over. "I can't help feeling angry, but I'm not sure why."

Missouri chuckled. "Oh that's easy. Time stolen and not returned, a life missed, dreams overlooked. You never got to say goodbye to that four year old or six month old and you resent the men who replace them, just as surely as if they took them away personally. You want to blame someone, and John…well, maybe there's some blame to cast there, but he did what he could for the man he was."

Mary poked at the fire, sending sparks tumbling to the sky. It was true enough. She wanted her life back, needed her life back and what she had was this at the end of the world. That was what was left. "I love them, Missouri, but…"

"It's all natural, Mary," Missouri said comfortingly. "There will be a lot of this. A lot of separated souls find their way together, reconcilin'. As a spirit, you loved them. You love them now, if only you could see it."

She nodded slightly, understanding in her mind but needing a little longer for that to reach her heart because underneath the anger was… guilt.

"I left them," she whispered. "I'm angry at myself, Missouri."

Missouri nodded as if she had been waiting for that. "It's something that people don't realize about the veil," she said. "Just as much a bereavement for the ones who died, as them who's left behind. Makes it easy for most to move on, all that seein' their loved ones grieve and being unable to touch and comfort. You will see them again. We're nearly there, after all."

Mary nodded again and continued poking at the fire, making flame patterns and pictures in the darkness. The only thing she could think of was… What then?

Dean and Sam had changed, anyone with half an eye could see that.

Jo found herself watching them from across the campfire, always set apart a little from the rest of the encampment, with Castiel just sitting and _watching, watching watching_. That's all the angel seemed to do, and at first she thought that he was protecting the Winchesters but the pair of them appeared to be sheltering the angel as much as he was looking after them. She wondered what the hell that was all about.

There were plenty of mutterings in the camp and she knew the pair of them weren't stupid, because stupid hunters died pretty damn quick. They had to be hearing the words spoken behind their backs, in nervous jokes and gossip that range from the malicious to the downright ridiculous. The Winchester Gospels were never seen being read in public, but all of a sudden everyone seemed to know about them, read bits that they would admit to in hushed tones. She'd been surprised to find herself in a couple of the books and it was with a sort of horrified fascination she had seen her almost adolescent behavior laid out in front of her, complete with inappropriate crush and then Dean's own feelings flung out for all to see. It was disappointing, but a rush to see it there on the well dog-eared page.

Dean felt for her, but not in a way that she wanted him to, although maybe if they'd given it a chance something might've sparked off. There were handwritten copies, painstakingly scribed of the 'gospels' that had been unpublished and Jo had grimaced as she saw page after page of people she knew being pawns in a much bigger game and being screwed over in ways she would never have believed possible.

And still the mobile town of Chuckville didn't know the answer to the question that was behind every campfire discussion and debate… Were the Winchesters the good guys or the bad guys?

"You know, even if you keep watching him like that, his clothes aren't going to fall off," Bella said right behind her, nearly making her jump out of her skin.

"I thought you were keeping a low profile?" Jo said leaning back away from the corner where she had been watching Sam, Dean, and Castiel.

"Oh please, Sam's asleep again," Bella dismissed. "Dean doesn't move when that happens and Sam sure as hell sleeps a lot. The angel? Hardly at all. It's creepy in a sort of obsessive stalker way. Something's wrong with them. Dean should be out there trying to shag anything that moves."

"It's not like they've got many friends here," Jo said, rolling her eyes a little. "Kubrick thinks he has it all sorted out. "

"Yes, well, Kubrick still thinks Revelations wasn't written by someone high on magic mushrooms." Bella dismissed his opinion just like that.

"Considering you're living in the aftermath of the apocalypse and following one of God's prophets, it's a little rich to criticize the original prophecy," Jo answered, and decided that if Bella had noticed she was watching, Dean definitely would've done and she had the choice of heading over or walking off before Dean confronted her on it. He was currently petting one of the dogs that seemed to love Sam and Dean, and she felt rightly or wrongly that that was a good sign. "I'm going over to see him. You coming? They did promise not to kill anybody."

Bella considered this. "You know perhaps we should clear the air. It's a bit difficult to avoid talking about it with Ash. I'm sure he thinks I had some sort of torrid affair with Dean."

"Yeah, I bet you let him believe that too," Jo said heading towards the brothers.

"You know what they say, treat 'em mean, keep them…"

"...coming after you with a shotgun?" Jo suggested, as the dog currently schmoozing up to Dean hruffed at them. "Hey, Dean, Sam asleep again?"

Dean looked up at her, looking uncomfortable and Jo was struck at how his eyes looked bruised with tiredness and the lines of his face tight with some sort of pain. She'd become so used to seeing him like that she hadn't connected it with a consequence.

"Yeah. He needs more beauty sleep than I do," he replied. He looked at Bella and Jo had half been expecting fireworks from Dean because Bella had played her part in sending him off to Hell. Bella certainly seemed to be bracing herself for some sort of reaction but Dean barely acknowledged her presence, glancing anxiously at Sam instead.

"Oh, I don't know macho man, I think you could do with a bit of buff and polish," Bella said throwing out a gambit which Dean singularly failed to pick up. "Seen you look better."

"Yeah well, the apocalypse has done wonders for you," Dean said flatly, finally looking back at her. "Welcome back from Hell, bitch."

It was a bit half hearted, though, and Jo sat down. "You okay, Dean?" she asked lowering her voice instinctively. "You don't seem… right."

"There has been much persecution since they have stayed here," Castiel spoke up suddenly, nearly making them jump. "This is not a good time to talk to Dean."

She noticed the way the pair of them both glanced at Sam and said. "You don't seem to be doing anything, so I thought it would be a good time…"

"Then you thought wrong," Castiel said in a voice that brooked no argument but unfortunately, Bella never took a hint.

"Oh, don't you have the adorable little man-crush," she cooed at Castiel. "All tall dark and intense staring eyes… You don't have to be jealous of me."

Jo sighed. "Bella, stop trying to play with the angel's head," she said even as Dean closed his eyes, just a moment, no doubt trying to find the strength not to kill the other woman. "Look, Dean, if you need a doctor, we've got a few here with medical training."

Dean gave a sound that couldn't really be called a laugh. "This ain't something a doctor can deal with."

"You know, you are not nearly good at acting as you think you are," Bella said. "Everyone can see that you've had an injury. I'm surprised there's not vultures circling overhead."

Dean glared at her. "Oh, I don't know. You wouldn't be sitting there if you knew what I was thinking."

"The point is you haven't done anything," she said. "You're not the type. You know your problem, you're a good guy."

"Oh you have no idea how bad I can be," Dean replied and Jo met his eyes and saw something she couldn't even fathom in them. She'd never thought Dean hated himself before, but right now she wasn't sure because there it was, plain as day. She suddenly realized that actually, the Winchester brothers had come so easily into the lion's den simply because they really didn't know if they needed to be punished or not.

"Oh, the demons used to tell stories about you, how good you were... quite the little protégé," Bella said airily, and Dean moved then and had his hand around her throat so fast she'd forgotten that he used to move like that all the time.

For a heart stopping moment, Jo thought Bella had finally pushed someone too far.

"Dean!" She belatedly called his name, and he looked like he was just going to snap.

It also looked like he had to tear his hand away, but he did. "Fuck you, Bella. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Really?" She rubbed her throat looking more astonished that he had let go more than anything. "I was in Hell, too, you know. It was no picnic for me either and some of us didn't have the legions of Heaven coming after us." She looked over at Castiel with a sly smile. "You want to 'raise me from perdition', as well? You shouted that loud enough for all of Hell to hear. Shame you were a bit late to the party. Anyone would think that your campaign suffered mysterious setbacks…"

Castiel looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on, you can't be that naïve. You know that Heaven was in on the whole thing. You really think the demons would've given you that much trouble if they weren't getting information from somewhere?" Bella said smirking. "Face it, you were all screwed."

"Then, why do you seem so happy about it?" Jo asked, not liking Dean's expression. It wasn't news to him at least but now Castiel was looking stricken.

"Many of my brothers died breaching the walls of Hell," he said in a low voice.

"Get used to things not being fair, if you're going to hang out in the world," Bella said with venom beyond her usual prickling banter.

Jo had had enough. "Bella, what the hell are you doing?" The other woman seemed to be taking a delight in hitting Dean and the angel's vulnerable points. "Are you trying to piss them off? What've they done to deserve it?"

"Start the Apocalypse? How about that?" Bella snapped back.

"No, it's not that. This is something personal," Jo pushed, because there was a personal obsession lurking under Bella's words and actions.

"Fine. Fine then, you want to know?" Bella said with a flashing looking in her eyes as she glared at Castiel and then Dean. "They saved **him**. They fought their way down into Hell, and they left all the rest of us behind! We all heard it, we saw it… Do you know what it was like to see someone rescued and then…then be left to suffer the fury of their fear and bitterness afterward? **You** knew exactly what it was like and left me in Hell, you bastard!"

Jo never thought in a million years that Bella would actually hit Dean but she did, with a whip crack slap across the face. She got there quick enough to stop a follow up, but Dean had toppled over, rocked by the blow and… he wasn't getting up again. He was clutching at his side and… shit, there was blood there, but they were ignoring Bella completely.

"Shit, shit, fuck…" Dean was looking even more shitty than before. "Cas… it's happening."

"I know, Dean." Castiel was moving to support him, reaching for something, a fresh dressing to press against Dean's side.

"What? What happened?" Jo asked leaning forward. She saw Bella about to open her mouth again and was filled with a cold hard rage. "Bella, I swear to god, you open your mouth and I will shut you up permanently." Her gun twitched in her hand and she was really close to pulling the trigger.

"Jo…" Dean's voice was rough with pain and hell, the last time she's heard that tone she'd been digging out a bullet from his shoulder. "Get Chuck, it's gonna happen now. He's having a vision it's… gotta be the last one."

"What?" Jo looked over at Sam and was startled to see an actual ripple of power around his body, shimmering like a heat haze. The air crackled and the tang of ozone flooded the area. The dog next to Dean whimpered and then skittered away, tail between its legs. "Holy crap!"

"Now!" Dean ordered hoarsely and he seemed to fold up in pain even as she scrambled up, heading at a sprint towards Chuck's trailer. She didn't get far before she found Chuck and Pamela already heading towards them, and a whole group of others who she recognized to be talented or have one of the powers in some way.

"Sam's having a vision, and Dean… something's wrong with him," Jo got out hurriedly, trying to get them to move faster.

"We know. " Chuck answered looking shaken. "It's like standing at the epicenter of a Richter 10. Feels like it's building up, too. I wasn't expecting this."

"Winchester has a hell of a kick to him," Pamela added, and Jo realized that the psychics really didn't have all the answers because this was scaring the crap out of them. "No one's going to miss this show."

By the time they reached Dean again there was a crowd there and, fresh blood on Dean's shirt, even as the angel held onto him, presumably trying to use whatever healing he could to keep him conscious.

"What's happening?" Jo asked joining the wary circle. "Why isn't anyone helping him? "

"The angel won't let us," Bella said glancing at her. "All we can do is wait it out."

That wasn't something Jo did very well, but it seemed she had no choice.


	5. Chapter 5

_"No, no…Dean…" They hadn't come this far to beat Lucifer and then have Dean die, again. For everything to die._

The nothingness was splintering out into infinite distance and it made his brain flinch just looking at it, or trying to see something where it didn't exist. There was this feeling of wrongness, like the sudden sensation he had experienced when he'd seen his father dead on the floor, when Dean had died and he didn't know what to do and the world had twisted around him, changing everything he had known. Sam had hold of Dean, his blood mixed with a fading glimmering light. "Open your eyes, Dean! Open them… you're not going to die on me now."

Amazingly, his brother's eyes did crack open, managing to focus on him somehow. "…going early to avoid the rush," Dean managed in something barely more than a cracking whisper and Sam didn't believe that, couldn't believe that.

Sam reached for the Sword of the Morningstar, hating to see it sticking out of Dean like that and the moment his hand grasped the hilt it was if every atom of his being ignited. Demon blood had been a drop in an ocean of water in concentration compared to what flowed into him from the Sword and his own power responded explosively reaching out for answers, calling for a way to stop this from happening. Suddenly then he could see everything, and his power spiraled outwards, out of control, feeling the terrible effect of the Omega like a hole in reality letting everything pour out all around him. The sword was the essence of one of the most powerful angels that had ever existed, and the effect was profound. Every block, every inhibition shattered and there was the power he had been striving to reach all this time coming to him, pouring into him from places he could never quite reach before. Power that could've stopped this whole thing before it started, re-forged the seals, pulled Dean from Hell and yet...

Something made him hesitate, because after Lilith, he had learned. He was wary now of too much power, too easily, and his mind sought the source of it. Though around him the world was falling into oblivion, a stillness descended upon him, an eye of the hurricane, of a sea of potential waiting for action, waiting for his word, his decision on what to do. But he didn't know what to do. He wanted to save his brother; he wanted to save the world and the people he cared about. There were a lot of people who deserved saving, even if he didn't know them.

And there was the knowledge in his mind, something moving in the stillness, stirring the vast ocean of potential and he knew what he had to do with a strange sense of detachment. The hole needed to be patched, things needed to be made whole again. He needed to turn all things on their axis, move Heaven and Earth, and the only way to do that was to pivot it on something immovable, something absolute, something he could have faith in.

The answer wasn't even hard. Never had been. He looked down at Dean and realized they were two parts of the same puzzle. For all their arguments, in everything they had been through, in his heart of hearts, he knew that Dean would be there if he needed him. That he loved him, and that was enough to find a way to fix everything if Dean could hold the center, be his foundation, his immovable object to his irresistible force, or his place to stand so he could move the world.

"Dean, Dean, I.. think I can fix this," he said in a low hurried voice, bending over his brother. "I need your help." His voice sounded strange as if there were harmonics folded into every syllable.

Dean's face was bathed in a golden light that Sam belatedly realized was emanating from him. His hazel eyes when he opened them again reflected coruscating light, a universe spinning with slow majesty even as they widened.

"Sam? What the fuck?" Dean managed staring at him in wonder.

"I… I'm not sure. I can fix this Dean, I think I can, but not without you and…" He hesitated. "It'll probably kill us both." He wasn't sure about that because there was a kernel of faith from his childhood that somehow Dean could pull off anything. He might break for himself, but Dean would hold for eternity for others. Sam knew that, he believed that with a faith and certainty he couldn't explain.

"Fix everything? Turn back time?" Dean managed to push one elbow up but he was sweating and pale under the golden light. It gilded him into something unearthly and beautiful.

"No." Sam didn't know why not, but somehow, that was against the rules. Suddenly there were rules there that he understood and had to obey. "We have to hurry."

"Never expected to get this far. I just…" Dean grimaced. "Want to end what I started…You do what you have to do."

"You gotta hold on, Dean. Hold it long enough that I fix this. The swords… they're the two opposing forces and they're both in you," Sam explained, positioning himself over Dean so he could grip the hilt. "You ready?"

"Born ready," Dean managed and Sam was staring into his eyes trying to say all the things they would never say aloud to each other, but they both knew. The words just wouldn't come.

Instead he just nodded and took hold of the hilt again.

Immediately he was there again in that immensity, and he reached for that potential, bracing himself on the sheer solidity of Dean's presence and then reached for the only thing that would patch the hole in the universe. He grasped the edge of Hell and dragged it up crashing into their reality, and it wasn't enough. He reached for the dancing glory of Heaven and it slipped and slid from his grasp and he pulled harder on Dean.

Somewhere, one part of him was screaming, tearing his throat to shreds but the detached part moved and made a decision. It had to be done. These were the rules and the forces needed to be closely combined. He grabbed the other Sword, Michael's sword and thrust it into Dean's body and watched his brother's eyes fly open with pain and shock.

That was enough; that was enough to tear down Heaven, to break the worlds to fix them all, to forge a patch that could not be undone and recreate a reality that whirled around them at the center. And if he screamed as the essence of one sword dissolved into him and as the other bled into his brother, that was understandable -- at least until the detachment left him, the glow faded and the weariness took him.

His last thought before the lingering power faded was maybe he could fix Dean as well, save him because his life was bleeding out but he was losing the grasp of it, the gold trickling through his fingers sliding way even as the aftershocks of the titanic collision shook everything apart around them. The last he knew was collapsing over Dean's body, one hand splayed with the last dying embers of power there soaking into his brother's body…

Sam woke then, the memory of that inconceivable power startling him into consciousness and immediately he was aware that they were surrounded by a lot of people, that Castiel was trying to deal with Dean, who was bleeding all over the place and that people were looking at him as if not sure whether to lynch him or bow down.

Fuck them. Dean was more his concern then. "What, what happened?" he asked Castiel, trying to get closer to him. "Why is this happening to him?"

"I thought you were the one with brains," Bella said. "It's a fucking stigmata, Sam. A new one... two stab wounds balanced on each side. Look at them all… Chuck's been speaking in tongues and narrating the whole damn thing live, Pamela's brains are practically leaking out of her nose, some of the others have passed out, and that was just from the memory of what happened. What the hell do you think it was? A full on bloody miracle, Sam."

Castiel was pressing bloodied hands over the two stab wounds that had appeared, seeping blood from Dean's stomach, although his brother was conscious, if looking pale and drawn. His eyes were fixed on Sam as if he couldn't tear them away. He felt a burst of something from the angel and Dean immediately pulled himself up.

"I uh.. I don't really know." It was true, he didn't. He wasn't sure what had been going on, only that it had felt like there had been two of him, one with detached perspective, but it still felt like him. His thoughts, his mind, but a higher part of himself rising above and having knowledge he didn't understand even now. There were glimpses in his memory of something huge and…unfathomable working through him, or for him.

He'd been possessed before and it definitely wasn't like that. That was screaming and powerless, this had felt like a part of him, an extension of who he could be like all the daydreams he'd had as a kid of having superhero powers come to life. But it couldn't be him, because there was no way he had the power to tear down Heaven and drag up Hell and mix the whole mess up to stop the end of everything. And how would he have known what to do?

Of them all, Bella seemed to be the only one being vaguely normal. She was looking at him as if he were the biggest idiot on the face of the earth, which it was entirely possible that he was.

"Only you, Winchester, could be so dense as to not realize when you are being a vessel for the Big Guy... you know, the whole Holy Spirit spiel." Bella said diffidently. "Though I thought only Dean could be this stupid."

"Bella, if I could get up, I'd kick your ass," Dean said in a voice much more like his own and Sam reached down a hand to help him up and found himself at a loss of what to say to his brother.

"Hey." He managed, before words became too challenging. They didn't have a good record about talking about anything serious and this was so far beyond anything they'd faced before that he didn't think words were going to deal with it.

"Hey." Dean said grimacing slightly. "So. Not the anti-Christ after all."

"Nope," Sam answered with a shrug.

"You have been the tool of God," Castiel said in awe.

"Yeah, he's definitely a tool," Dean said quirking an eyebrow at him and just like that, more of a miracle than the revelation, things felt 'normal' again.

"Shut up, Dean."

"You going to argue with Cas, here?" Dean asked, and there was color back in his face as he brushed himself off. "Angel of the Lord and all. Damn, I liked this shirt."

"Red's not your color, Dean," Sam answered and for a moment he smiled, the first real genuine smile he had managed in a long time. The mystery had been answered and he wasn't the anti-Christ after all. Dean was still alive and still a pain in the ass and maybe now they wouldn't have all the crap from everyone in the camp. He didn't care what was at South Dakota right now because here and now everything was as fine as it could be.

As far as days in the End Times went, this was looking to turn out pretty good.

Anticipation was crackling around the camp and Jess was riding up front with Mary and Ellen, looking for their route through to wherever they were headed.

They were within the borders of South Dakota and they were drawing close to their destination and everyone could feel it, psychic or not.

"So, how much further to Bobby Singer's place?" Jess asked, checking her gun absently. The trip had changed her. She had gone from clueless to competent and she felt she had a place, a role that she understood, here and now. What she did saved lives, and every life was incredibly precious. There was something heartbreaking about every death since the Apocalypse, because death had had so much of the world it seemed a crime to take what had been left. Losing their people to demon kind (or to humans who turned out worse than demons) was just plain wrong, and she didn't need a college degree to figure that one out.

"Just a little ways," Ellen said, looking out over the road ahead.

"There's a light in that direction," Mary said gesturing. "Must be pretty strong to see it in daytime."

"Maybe there are more survivors there," Ellen answered. "Everyone seems to be heading that way." She looked worried though. "Makes me wonder why."

"What?" Jess asked. "Missouri seems to know where we're going."

Mary, who was driving, said in that tone that meant she had missed some hunter's experience, "She's talking about the fact there are things out there like sirens, that lure people then eat them. "

"You think we're walking into some huge trap?" Jess said alarmed. "Then why are we doing it?"

"Ain't for certain," Ellen said. "But hunters know if it looks too good to be true, it generally is."

Mary chuckled a little. "You wouldn't believe the tests I put John through after I fell for him. Dad didn't even have to suggest them. We had holy water, accidentally spilling salt over him, silver…"

"Did you do the cough _Christo_ as well?" Ellen asked, sounding amused

"Pickup lines for hunters never change," Mary said and smiled. "I thought he was too good to be true."

She'd thought the same about Sam. Smart, funny, strong and physical and who loved her with an intensity that made her wonder what he had lost in his life. She had wondered that he might be too good to be true, but not because he was potentially something else. Their dreams together had been particularly ordinary of the house, careers, kids and after speaking with Mary she realized these had been extraordinary dreams for him. Something brave and rare from the hunters' world.

"Better safe than sorry," she said, even as they led the convoy down the main street.

"Left here, " Ellen said. "Bobby's place is a ways out of town. He doesn't like too much company."

It seemed though that Bobby had company whether he liked it or not. It started a ways up the road they were traveling. Cars, all sorts of vehicles, parked up, the dim sunlight glittering off of glass. Eventually, they had to call a halt to the convoy and get out to travel on foot. There were recent signs of people there and they picked their way through the obstacle. From the trails there was a large encampment of people building up, a little ways off of the road near a creek, which made sense, but Ellen looked at the turn off and gestured to the road.

"Bobby's place is up here," she said "We can take a look over there, when we've asked what he knows."

It made sense to Jess at least. "You think he's likely to?" she asked even as they passed the ramshackle sign pointing to the scrap yard. Somebody had daubed "Repent of your sins!" over it and she wondered if that was a message to Bobby or just something people did in the aftermath of the Apocalypse when religion didn't seem so crazy after all.

As she rounded the corner, she saw the somewhat ramshackle house first and then stopped gaping and almost literally dumbstruck. Behind Bobby's place, practically sharing the porch entrance was a city of light. It was as if someone had reached in and placed every archetype of a Heavenly city, a fantasy world, and dropped it in Bobby Singer's back yard.

Somehow, the perspective was strange as if it as a lot larger than the part of the world it seemed to be inhabiting and the circling walls glittered with all the colors of every precious stone ever discovered and as many that were new to the human eye. The glory of it rose up, bridging earth and sky, generating its own light that flickered and shimmered in an aurora around and above its towers and spires.

Of one accord they stopped and stared, trying to comprehend what they were seeing and failing.

"Holy mother of God…" Ellen murmured adopting a hushed tone. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Zion? New Jerusalem? The circles of Heaven?" Mary suggested after a long pause.

"Bobby is going to be so pissed with that turning up in his back yard." Ellen said after a long pause. "You have no idea."

"I think he might've noticed it was there already," Jess pointed out mildly. The entrance that she could see seemed firmly closed and then she spotted that there was a person outside the front of the house… more than one. Dogs, too, who seemed too lazy to get up and do more than bark a couple of times to announce, _'hey visitors'_.

"That's Bobby and…" Ellen seemed to be squinting a little, but it was her glance at Mary that gave it away.

"John," Mary said as if trying to remember what the word meant, and then she was starting forward at first hesitantly and then running even as the man Jess didn't know stood and half ran to meet her.

"Movie love," Ellen said dismissively, standing with her hand on her hip watching for a moment. "We won't get any sense out of her for a bit. Might as well see if Bobby is feeling a mite talkative."

Jess had to admit from what she could see -- the sort of kiss that deserved an orchestral backing track -- she felt like she was intruding on a private reunion.

"Bobby, you been doing some home improvements?" Ellen asked as she headed up the steps.

"Very funny." He lifted his chin up, and crossed his arms. He was looking pretty tan, like they'd been living outside on the porch. "I'm squatting on my own damn property because the back half of my house is too close to the Kingdom of God for my damn comfort. Fancy seeing you here, Ellen, who -- Jo? Damn, you grew up."

Jess shook her head. "I'm Jessica Moore," she said. "I... uh..."

"Sam's girlfriend. You know the one," Ellen said, and it still surprised Jess that there were whole groups of people who knew about her through virtue of her murder. "We're scouting ahead for a fair sized group of survivors. Heading here because...well, you're the go to guy, right?"

Bobby snorted. "Yeah, I guess so. John beat all of you here, looking for my damn arsenal. The shame of it is that the panic room's just a hair too close to the influence zone of 'the Kingdom'." He craned his head a little, looking towards his house for a second before he turned towards Jess, giving her a gruff smile that matched the beard and the hat. "Jess, pleasure to finally meet you. I'd say I'm surprised you came out of this okay, but I'm not. Glad you got another chance."

"Thanks," Jess said with a smile. "I guess... I guess Sam hasn't made it yet?" It was possible. There had been signs of some people camped up in the area and it looked like most of them had come up here at least once, because there was a walkway track through the scrubby grass. Maybe they came up regularly and were just waiting for something. She just had the slightest pang of envy when she looked over at John and Mary. Sam should be here for her, but nothing. "Or... have you heard any news about any of them?"

"Not yet, no. I've heard rumors of them, but it ain't quite news. Winchester and I've been waiting. First, because we figured it was as good a place to call home base as any right now, and then, because people started to come here to try and go into the city," Bobby said, glancing at the ostentatious city of light behind them.

"Can they get in?" Ellen asked. "Gates are looking pretty shut to me. Maybe we're the ones left behind you know?"

That seemed a bit defeatist to Jess. "Can't be right," she said. "Why have it here if no one is allowed in?"

"Eh, they come open once a day or so. Thereabouts, but no one can get in. They just… stop." Bobby walked down a step towards them as his dog got up and stretched lazily and then came over to lick her hand and sniff her. "Besides, I'm not too keen on rushing in there, and neither was Winchester. I've got a feeling about it. Holy shit, is that Mary?"

"Sure is," Ellen said, "Did you know she was hunter-born? Girl didn't forget any tricks while she was dead."

Jess was staring at the gates. "Can you see who's in there?"

"Nope, afraid not. No one's come out, either." From Bobby, that sounded like a warning. "I'm still pissed that it engulfed my damn junkyard."

"So, do you know anything?" Ellen said. "We pretty much came across country to see if you had any lore on this, if there was any way out of this..."

Jess was pretty sure turning back the clock didn't work on the apocalypse.

"Uh-uh. It's done. It's almost over. Heaven is right here on earth, Ellen." Bobby stopped his slight pacing, and stood in front of Ellen. "This is what we've got now. I figure the pieces of Hell will start to burn away and fade with time, maybe with a little help, but the demons are still here with shiny new breathing bodies. We might be able to kill 'em, but they ain't just laying down for it."

"Shit," Ellen said. "Well, we've got Missouri. She seems to have a hotline to what we're meant to be doing. She'll be along soon."

"From what she says, pretty much everyone is coming this way," Jess added.

"Fan-fucking-tastic." Bobby turned a little, and looked out over his lawn. It was hard not to see John and Mary still embracing, saying things to each other, but they were far enough away that all Jess got was the noise. "I guess I'll have to run the hose out here and get more gas for the generator, then."

Jess grinned. Thinking about the amount of people they had picked up on their way here and the fact they would all be arriving soon, that seemed like an excellent idea.

Mary felt like an idiot. She'd spent so long wondering what she might think, or feel if she should meet up with John or her sons again, and had been totally unprepared for the completely visceral response she had experienced. John… John looked older, but he was still her John, the same one who melted her every time he smiled. He lit up when he saw her and damn, he was more solid than ever and the kiss… metaphors seemed a bit superfluous as they were literally at the gates of Heaven.

She hadn't seen John cry until now. He'd teared up at the births of his sons, but this time by the time they drew breath she could see the wetness on his skin, and on her own. She didn't even remember the tears starting.

"Mary…" It was a rough almost broken sound and then he repeated it over and over, gaining in strength until he whirled her around. "Mary… I've missed you so goddamn much! I didn't know if…"

"I didn't, either," she confessed. "I should've known you'd get where everyone was going first, John."

He gave a slow grin. "I was waiting for Sam and Dean, see if they made it." There was a subtle flicker in his eyes that she had always been able to read.

"John…" She exhaled slightly. "I know what you're not saying. I know some of what happened from Missouri and Ellen."

"Missouri? Missouri's here?" he asked, not letting go of her but drawing back a little so they could talk.

"She's been leading our group here," Mary answered. "I need to tell you this, love. I've heard the rumors about Sam and Dean and … My family were hunters, John." She offered up the truth as evidence against her. She was the one keeping secrets from her husband for all she turned her back on that life, but he deserved to know that.

But he was still smiling, smoothing away the dampness on her cheek with his thumb. "I know," he said. "You think I didn't hear about Samuel and Deana Campbell? Hunters all know each other, and even if no one else remembers, they do."

"But I made a deal..." Mary cut to the heart of it, determine that they would wipe clean their slate. "For your life. That started this."

John shook his head. "Way I understand it, that's a family tradition now. Can't go throwing stones on that one." He kissed her again. "I screwed up. I haven't been the best father in the world. Some would say I've been a spectacular asshole." He jerked his head over towards Bobby. "I've had more than a few lectures since I got here. My boys, _our_ boys, they've been through a lot more than both of us. I was so damn proud when Dean avenged you, I didn't think where that path was leading. You wouldn't believe it…you wouldn't believe I didn't realize what I had done to him until he was dying. And I pushed Sammy away." He shook his head. "All because I made the mistake of putting the hunt first."

"Like I said, I grew up a hunter's kid, John, I know all about that," Mary answered. "You did your best, I know that much." She didn't even have to ask, she just knew. It was funny how terrifying forgiveness seemed when it lurked on the horizon, but if you embraced it, problems seemed to melt away. "All that matters is that I love you, and with any luck, you still love me."

She let her tone be questioning again and almost giggled girlishly when John picked her up again.

"I never stopped, not even for a moment. But, I wasn't a monk, Mary…" John said with a hint of apology there.

"Just as well, I've always liked your hair," Mary smiled back at him.

"If you two are goin' to do what you're both thinkin' about," came a voice behind them. "Then you'd better be finding somewhere a little bit more appropriate than in front of the City of God."

John laughed again. "Missouri!" he said and let go of Mary to embrace her as well.

"Hmm, a few minutes in your company, Mary and he's smiled more than he has in the past couple of decades," the psychic commented and gave her a smile. "But I told him I would tan his hide if he made any deal with the devil, then the darn fool went right ahead and did it."

"To save Dean," John protested. "And Sam."

"Whew, well, I suppose I might just forgive you, if you get me to a chair." Missouri said. "Powerful stuff comin' from Heaven there." She fanned herself a little and Mary thought it was a bit of playacting until she noticed perspiration on the psychic's forehead.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "Is it…if it's being this close then maybe we should get you away."

"I'm fine, Mary," Missouri answered. "There's just something big brewin', I can feel it." She sat gratefully on a chair. "It could be any one of a number…"

She froze mid sentence, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Is it a seizure?" Mary asked, concerned and starting forward to help her even as Bobby and John moved in closer to catch her before she fell and take her over to a chair. Beside them the dogs abruptly sat back on their haunches and howled, even as they could hear answering howls in the distance

"Some sort of trance state," Bobby answered as he glanced at the dogs. "Seen it before. Just got to wait it out... Hope she don't bite off her own tongue."

That wasn't really reassuring, and she'd never seen Missouri affected this strongly before but they had to just stand there, waiting until Missouri slumped, the muscle tension leaving her body. The dogs abruptly stopped and shook themselves off and went back to panting and lolling on the porch front.

"My word," She fanned herself, "There won't be a one of my type who didn't feel that…"

"What?" Mary asked, reassuring herself that Missouri was okay. She was sure they would all feel lost without her.

"Honey, you wanted to know whether Sam was still alive?" the psychic said. "The answer is hoo-boy yes, and creatin' a ruckus."

"What about Dean?" John asked immediately. "He with him?"

"Questions, always questions, John Winchester. You ain't any more patient than you were before," Missouri chastised him. "Difficult to tell for certain but I'd be willing to bet that he is if his brother is having visions that loud, because grief can dull it all down. Someone needs to take that boy in hand." She raised her eyebrows at Jess who managed to blush.

Mary wanted to get back to the point. "Where are they? Where can we find them?"

"Easy, Mary, girl, all I can tell you is that they're coming here. A lot of them, just as y'all did -- to find an expert," Missouri said. looking at Bobby.

"I'm beginning to think it's no damn coincidence that the City of God ended up in my scrap yard," Bobby said. "Hell, I'm even getting a few ideas on who to blame here. Thought Dean had cut him off from that sort of thing."

Mary frowned. "You don't think he's …" The anti-Christ. the devourer of worlds, the Great Beast… how could she even think that about her own son?

"Lord, no, Mary, that much is for certain. There's no taint left in him," Missouri reassured them.

"Thank God," John said with an expression of relief. "Thank God."

"So we should just wait?" Mary asked after her own fervent mental prayer.

"Mary, honey, that's all any of us should do." Missouri said and Bobby huffed a little

"Definitely getting more gas for the generator," he muttered under his breath. "Why don't you all just go ahead and make yourself at home. City of God ain't going anywhere, and neither are we."

As Mary felt John's arm slide around her waist, and smiled again in delight, she wasn't sure that things could match how she was feeling now, not even the bliss of Heaven. All she needed now was her sons, and they would be a family again.

Jo squinted, shielding her eyes as they approached their destination. "There's a shit load of people down here," she announced to the others . "Like, an entire town full. " They could see the camp from where they were standing surveying the route ahead and it was packed out

"Dude, looks like a music festival." Dean said. "Apocafest... yeah, that's what this Apocalypse needs. A decent soundtrack."

"There are so many things wrong with that, I don't even know how to begin," Sam said and Jo found the rhythm of their incessant banter that had been going on through the whole drive oddly soothing.

"Little bit of rocking out..." Dean shifted awkwardly. "The angels could use something kick-ass."

They'd all been surprised when Castiel had identified some of the survivors in their group as angels he had known, trying to blend in. Jo had just thought they were a little shell-shocked. Turned out the whole emotion thing was new to them, as well as being shell-shocked.

"You know, if your side is giving you trouble, you didn't have to come out here," Jo pointed out. She had discovered that Dean responded to sympathy with one of two automatic reactions. Either he was disgusted with it, or he tried to get laid -- not seriously, but almost in a reflex that made her laugh. Dean was right, they had a connection, but it wasn't a romantic one. It took seeing him in the flesh again to figure that out.

Dean gave her the sort of look he usually shot at Sam, who was smirking behind him at her. "My side is healing up fine now that Sasquatch has stopped remembering me being sliced and diced. I'm not an invalid."

"Just an idiot," she said with shrug. "So did you bring the binoculars or what?"

Scoping out the lay of the land had become a standard. All the hunters who were guarding the convoy had made it a priority to get decent pairs, so they could spot Heaven and Hell fragments from a distance. The damn things were like patches of emotional quicksand. Step into Heaven, and you stopped dead in sheer bliss and in Hell, you ended up much in the same way from depression and despair. Of course, turned out the Winchester brothers could do something about that too.

Dean insisted on going into every fragment of Hell he could find and as he said… "Smiting the crap out of that shit," just so he could release anyone who had been sucked in or the demons had taken. At least it had shut Bella up. Jo guess she could understand the attitude; being left behind rankled at the best of times, let alone being in Hell.

"Surviving the apocalypse gave you some attitude," Dean commented. "Here... take a look."

"Where's Bobby's again?" Jo said looking over the camp with the equipment. "All I can see…light. There's a light source over there. Can't see a thing."

"Great. Going in blind, just the way I like it," Dean said.

"Deaf, too," a voice said from behind them and Jo stiffened.

"Mom?" There she was, shotgun under her arm, hair pulled back and look appraising as she focused on them all.

There was an instinct to run forward and she took a few steps and then remembered, they hadn't spoken for a long time; that they had argued and she had run from her. Then there had been the Apocalypse and all of that seemed so trivial now.

"Jo…"

Oh god, her mom was crying, she never cried. She shouted, she made ultimatums, but she was cold and withdrawn and she didn't… didn't…

She stepped forward again, unsure of herself.

"Oh hell, just get on with it, before Sam starts crying too," Dean commented. "He's got this whole leaky eye syndrome. Medical condition."

Sam apparently punched him on the arm, from the way he hit him back and they scuffled.

Her mother didn't say anything else just hugged her and nodded at her. "You're looking good," her mother said. "Hope you've been keeping these boys in check."

Jo smiled at that, realizing that she didn't care about who'd been right or wrong back then. It really was irrelevant now and maybe it had kept her alive. "Not sure anybody can do that, Mom." He mother didn't quite let go of her for all she pulled back some.

Ellen gave them a look over. "Who'd you come with then? We've got watchers on every road. Your group's been kicking up a dust storm we all spotted. Thought I'd come out and check it out."

"Got a few more of the hunters -- some angels," Jo said. "Ash is there."

"Ash?" Ellen interrupted and she looked amazed and pleased. "I swear he's like a cockroach. Indestructible."

"I'll tell him that," Jo promised. "Chuck, the Prophet, is leading us, though we've got these guys too." She nodded to Sam and Dean.

"Well." Ellen looked them. "Seen you looking better, boys," she said. "C'mon. Times a wasting. There's a whole group of people waiting for you and… well, you've got to see it to believe it."

She saw Sam and Dean exchange a look. "Who's waiting?" Sam asked.

"Some psychic you are," Dean said. "Can't even tell who, or what's down there."

"Well, I know it's important," Sam said with a shrug. "And… big."

"Bobby's there, so that ain't news," Dean put in.

Ellen smiled. "Just get in that car of yours and get down that hill," she said. "They're waiting."

"You mean… you mean our dad is down there?" Sam asked

It should've been good news. Finding her mom felt like good news to her but from the way Dean stiffened and Sam looked conflicted, perhaps things weren't so easy in the Winchester family.

"What's the problem?" Jo asked. "He's your dad, he's going to be ecstatic to see you."

"Wouldn't be so sure of that," Dean muttered. He looked like he wanted to run, though he stood looking over towards the light. "Fuck. Seriously."

"What's wrong with you two?" Ellen asked. "Your daddy's been down there waiting for you. And your mom, too, now..."

The pair of them went silent and Jo stared at them incredulous. "You can't tell me that you think they're going to be pissed over everything?" Jo asked. "Seriously?"

"I broke the first seal," Dean said flatly.

"I broke the last," Sam added. "Instant Apocalypse."

"And then you fixed it," Jo said. "Fought Lucifer and won, stitched the universe back together. They'll be proud, you idiots."

"Besides, what you going to do? Run away?" Ellen asked slyly, and immediately the pair of them bristled. "Not like there's anywhere else to go."

Dean looked at her and then turned and headed away from them all, hands in his pockets and looking down.

Sam looked at Jo. "You might want to explain, at least some of it. I'm going after Dean. We'll see you down there, Jo."

She nodded even as her mom watched them walk away. "They are seriously fucked up, Mom," she said ignoring the disapproving look at her swearing.

"Wouldn't you be? They were played by both sides, screwed over, told repeatedly it's all their fault the world died, and no one is actually saying much about the saving thing…"

"Well, pretty sure they'll be put straight out there." Ellen said. "You want a lift?"

And Jo realized, correctly as it turned out, that it was an invitation to talk it out and clear the air.

Dean faced the drive down to Bobby's with an air of resigned doom and well-hidden wild hope. No matter what anyone else said, facts were facts and he had broken the First Seal. Whether he was manipulated into it, had no choice, it was destiny or all that shit, didn't matter as far as he was concerned and he was pretty damn sure their dad wasn't going to be happy. A glance over at Sam picked up a mirror of his own expression and Dean knew his brother was going through the same thoughts but with the last seal in mind.

"Hey, don't worry. You get to say you stuck a band-aid on the universe," Dean commented, possibly driving the slowest he ever had in his life.

"You have both done the work of God," Castiel said from behind them. "You will not be blamed for that."

Sam looked at the angel and shook his head. "Sorry, Cas, but it doesn't work like that for humans. Dad has been blaming us for being less than perfect, pretty much through our hunting years."

Dean purposefully said nothing about the fact that he'd had a lot longer at being under that microscope than Sam had. Sam had never really known the whole mom-and-dad thing. He did. He remembered losing what felt like them both in that demon fire because someone took away his mom, and the man who had been the dad who played with him, was strong and smiled and laughed was replaced by a driven, serious soldier.

All his life he'd hoped to get them back. Sam had never known Dad from before, and his only memories of Mom were stories they told, which was a whole different tragedy, but he couldn't remember it, not like Dean did. He wasn't sure if what he felt was terror or hope so he settled for making his face a mask.

"Your parents will rejoice to see you," Castiel said again.

"Rejoice is a bit of a biblical way of putting it," Dean commented. It would be easier to get out and walk with the vehicles around but he was reluctant to leave the Impala.

"We live in biblical times," Castiel answered calmly.

"I don't remember there being anything in the bible about us." Dean could hear Sam grasping at the new subjects. "Or about any of this."

"Some is clear to those with the knowledge," Castiel said mildly and then quoted. "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the Heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever."

"Yeah well," Dean knew it like he knew any lore, as a tool rather than a sacred word. They weren't far and he just wasn't sure what he was going to do. He'd faced Lucifer with less introspection than this, and he couldn't shake the feeling that something was just not going to go right. "A little less drugged up than Revelations, I guess."

"Do you feel that?" Sam said suddenly. "What is that? It's like... I can hear music, and the air feels strange."

"I think you're the one feeling strange," Dean answered automatically but he did try and listen.

"Seriously," Sam said. "What is that?" He was looking around as if that would help.

"I feel it, too," Castiel said. "It is the voice of Heaven, the music of the spheres." He paused and looked out in the middle distance. "It is the song of home."

"A Heaven fragment?" Dean asked. Damn honey traps, those things were. When they freed people from those, they spat in their faces and tried to punch them. It was almost worse than freeing them from Hell, because at least people knew they'd been in a trap in Hell.

"No, Dean." Castiel gestured as they got over the rise to Bobby's house and Dean stood on the brake. "It is the City of God."

Dean ended up squinting at the light. It burned in colors of unearthly splendor and it half short-circuited his brain just staring at it so he found himself saying. "Anyone seeing the resemblance to Vegas? Or is it just me?"

"Dean!" Sam's tone was horrified. "You can't say that about Heaven… it's Heaven."

Dean shrugged a little, more interested in the people he could see on Bobby's front porch. Goddammit, a welcoming committee. He could've done without that. He parked the Impala, and gave a brief forced smirk to the others. "Let's get this done, before everyone else gets here. I think I see them waitin'."

He'd recognize his Dad's silhouette anywhere. He'd recognized Bobby's too. His mom, god… he could see her profile even from here and… His eyes widened and he didn't have chance to say anything because Sam had spotted the other younger woman up there and was out of the car, slamming the door and half loping in an astonished run to meet her in a reunion that probably should've been some sort of hallmark moment.

Jessica. All that wondering about their parents and he forgot that this whole chain of events began with the loss of someone his brother loved enough to want to marry, to turn his back on hunting.

"Oh." Castiel craned his head, staring at the city behind the house, but he kept walking.

"Dean!" Bobby saw him first, started down the stairs. "We wondered when you boys were gunna get your asses out here."

"Things kinda got in the way," Dean answered trying to move without showing any sign of weakness because his dad was there and it was just habit. "Sam gets a little distracted." He jerked his head over to where Sam was still kissing Jessica and he was tempted to yell at him to get a room. "Hey Bobby. Done up the place huh?"

"Yeah. Welcome to my new living room," Bobby snorted, and then he was hugging Dean tightly.

Dean hugged him back despite the sharp pain and aches where the damn stigmata were still healing in his side, and it was easier to do that, to be grateful that Bobby made it, than look up at his parents and meet their eyes. He hadn't realized how much he had relied on Bobby being there when everyone had fallen by the wayside until they arrived here again. "You might want to redecorate," he said and looked up finally.

His father and mother were standing there, looking stunned to see him… or them, because Sam was finally turning up, still practically joined at the hip with Jess.

"Yeah, it's in my plans. I've been trying to talk Ellen into going with me to find a Home Depot or something, but she doesn't think I could paint the place blue without getting zapped." He pulled back, and turned to follow Dean's eyes. "How about I take care of your lost lamb here and let you all, uh... Go on."

Fuck. His mind had gone so blank he didn't call out them, just walked towards the group, steady and unflinching. Sometimes it was just best to go with your gut.

Dean nodded. "Thanks, Bobby," he said when that was not really enough to express the whole deal of what he really wanted to say to him.

He was just struggling with how to say something to his parents when they took the initiative and he found himself half crushed first by his dad, then by his mom. He'd swear on the Impala that any tears in his eyes were due to healing injuries being squeezed tightly. He had no idea what they were saying to each other. It was all snippets of apologies, confession, being proud and Dean hardly took it in., He wasn't sure which bits were him and which were his mom and dad but he eventually stepped back feeling a little light headed.

"Dean, Sam…" his dad was saying, and he sounded choked. "Thank God, you made it. You stuck together and you made it."

He exchanged a slightly guilty look with Sam. "It wasn't as straight forward as that, Dad. I, we…" How did he go about explaining everything? He didn't even know what they knew.

"Boys," Bobby interrupted. "I kinda got your folks up to speed, on right before the end. Still waitin' for some of that story, myself. Just thought you needed to know before you got a run up at confession."

"Uh, right… thanks, Bobby," Sam said looking awkward standing there and Dean grimaced a little.

"Winchesters…" Missouri moved along the porch to join them. "I swear, all of you. Afraid to share weaknesses. We could stand here for weeks and you wouldn't do it, if your lives depended on it. Dean and Sam, your parents love you and are proud of you and they know and regret that this happened to you both. Mary, John, the boys love you; they're just afraid that you'll blame them for the apocalypse and everything that has happened. Ain't that right, Dean?"

The psychic raised her eyebrows at him and Dean gave a shrug. "Pretty much yeah," he admitted.

"Not your fault, Dean." John said immediately. "It's never been your fault or Sam's. We know that." It was good to hear but, Dean couldn't shake guilt just like that but he wasn't going to argue it.

"It's called a 'setup'. You two were right where they wanted you." Bobby popped open the door to a, okay, Bobby's fridge was now on his porch, and jacked into the generator. And there were cots, so they were all actually camping out outside? "Anyone want a beer? Hey, angel -- you got drunk yet?"

Castiel looked up at him. "No, I have not," he said still staring up at the surreal sight of a city behind them.

"Well, hell, Cas, I think this calls for a drink," Dean said moving to sit down. They were here and that was far as the plan went. "As I have no idea what to do next."

"Well, we're sitting on the doorstep of the City of God," Mary said, still staying close to him and she looked about his age now. Wow, that was just freaky. "We must've been called here for a reason."

"No offence, Bobby, but I'm not sure why it's in your back yard," John said.

"To piss me off." Bobby seemed pretty damn firm on that, and he wasn't peering past his house to look at it. "I'm glad you're all right, and all, but my wife's buried out that way and I have no idea if Amy came up or not when the rest of you resurrected, because there was a god-damned _City of God_ on top of her grave site."

He cracked open the pop-top on the beer, and thrust it out at Castiel. "Here, drink up. You might need it the next time those gates open."

The angel took it, but looked at it a little suspiciously even as Dean swigged from his. A cold beer was still damn good, even after the Apocalypse. Probably even better.

"Who's to say there's no beer in Heaven?" John quipped and that faintly astonished Dean. His dad in his head wasn't this light hearted. It wasn't that they had never laughed, but he could remember the occasions that they did with enough clarity to know they were unusual events.

Missouri joined the conversation, bringing along some other refreshments for those who weren't wanting a beer, and smiled. "Good to see both you boys, pay no attention to these two. They think they know everythin' but can't see the obvious. The City of God is here because of you two." She nodded at Sam and Dean. "Plain as daylight."

Dean paused. "What? We didn't do anything!"

"Aside from stitch everything back together," Missouri pointed out. "People you now, or knew survived, and you come to Bobby here when you need answers. The City of God is the biggest answer anyone can get."

"Fresh out of answers," Bobby deadpanned, handing Missouri a beer, too. "I know I'm not going into that city, not yet. Whether they've got beer there or not."

Dean quirked a half smile, trying to avoid getting into a long discussion with his parents just then. He wasn't ready to go over things yet not in the sort of detail they needed. There was something a little obvious about the city. He'd learned not to trust something that looked too good to be true, because it usually contained the sort of things that would try to eat your face.

"I still don't get it," Sam said, frowning. "The City of God is in Bobby's back yard because of us? But why? I know we fixed things, but… why would that impact on the world like this?"

"You held God's power and used your brother as foundation to reshape things, Sam, honey," Missouri explained as if it were all perfectly logical. "Lord help us -- a world rewoven by Winchesters!"

"See, and that's why I keep telling Ellen we'll be able to find a hardware store around here somewhere..." Bobby turned, like he was looking for Ellen when she was just over by the generator off the side of the porch talking with Jo, and then he started off of the steps, past Dean and onto the lawn. "Oh, hell. Is that another caravan coming up the road?"

"The Prophet of the Lord arrives," Castiel said, still holding onto the beer. Dean wasn't sure if he had drunk any though. "And his people."

"He's a writer called Chuck," Dean said, kicking back. "He's been writing our hunts for the past few years."

"When Dean came back for me," Sam added and pulled Jess close instinctively.

"The Gates will be opening soon," John said. "They usually do about this time of day. Maybe this time we'll finally see some action."

"So what happens?" Dean asked. "Someone come out, take names? Tick people off on a list?"

He was pretty damn sure he wasn't going to be any of those lists.

"Usually, the doors open, but no one can go in. " Bobby shrugged his shoulders, and kept walking towards the group, like he didn't want them that far up on his lawn.

"Haven't seen it happen yet, myself." And damn, that was his _dad_ standing there, hands in his front pockets, shifting to stand beside him. "I'm glad you both made it. I don't know what comes next, but we're all... here, at least."

"Yeah," Dean said, and he'd spent so much time apart from people that this feeling of people being around was kinda unfamiliar to him. He saw a couple of familiar faces and said, "I should say we've got Pamela, and a whole load of the Roadhouse Hunters... and Ash and Bella." He still wasn't over that, though he could understand it a little more now, the blame of him being rescued.

"Should've known Ash would make it," his dad said. They were carefully not talking about it and the place was filling up with people from the other campsite as well. He'd forgotten what being around a lot of people was like.

Bobby was out there trying to get people to park in something like an orderly manner in the field across from his house. Like anyone gave a damn anymore if someone parked on the road. Just Bobby, Dean guessed.

Jo and Ellen seemed to be deep in discussion, showing that at least one family knew how to do reunions properly even if they had argued. He just felt like the things that needed to be said were too big to put out there in the open and he could tell Sam was itching to say stuff himself. It was weird. He was more used to spilling everything to Bobby than he was with his dad. He'd covered a hell of a lot up for Sam at various points and for himself where he could but without his dad there, he ended up spilling pretty much everything to Bobby one way or another, including things about his father.

And from the look his dad was giving him, he was pretty sure John knew it.

Chuck was walking up, with a whole group of people. "Hey, John Winchester. Good to meet you in the flesh. I know a lot about you and Bobby Singer. "

"That sounds ominous," John drawled, reaching out to shake his hand. "Good to meet you. Prophet."

"Chuck," the other man replied shaking it back. "I ought to thank you. I made my living out of you and your family Before. And I didn't even write down some of the... more extreme adventures. Anyway, the Gates will open soon, I know that much. Got to write that this morning -- took me a while to recover from your boy's vision. Pam and I have seen up to that point and then... well it all fades to white. Haven't met a psychic yet who can see beyond that."

"He's right," Missouri said. "All paths lead here and then things stop." She nodded to Chuck. "Pleasure to finally meet the both of you in person."

Dean raised his eyebrows. Did the psychics all meet up on some astral plane and party? He was never going to get the hang of that.

"Likewise," Chuck answered and then looked over at the Gates. "Any minute... ah, there we go."

Dean glanced behind him to see the intensity of the light around the gates become positively blinding and he did unconsciously move closer to Sam, Jess and his parents. Castiel was staring at the gate unmoving even as it swung wide and the survivors of the apocalypse pressed closer warily.

"The Voice of God comes," Castiel said in a low voice.

He half expected some dry comment from Bobby, but he wandered back towards Dean and Sam and them and set his jaw hard while he smacked Castiel's shoulder. "Stop whispering, ya idjit."

Dean thought he could see the distant shape of people bleached out by the light. People raised and then reclaimed once again into Heaven's gates but his attention was captured by the unfamiliar tone in Bobby's voice and he instinctively stepped back. "Bobby?"

"The Metatron is within him," Castiel said and like magic, the assembled Winchesters, hunters and everyone else stepped back. The angels present came forward and made a form of a bow, though they did not look overly happy about it.

"Totally did not see that coming," Sam muttered to him.

"Yeah, you and me both." He was wary of people not sounding right, but it didn't have the tenor of a possession. Not the usual kind.

"Dean, you're the only one who can put an end to this, seeing as you were used to break the first seal. If you agree to stay here, everyone else can get off of my lawn and go into the Kingdom," the Metatron said, using Bobby's voice to deliver what was effectively a death sentence.

Dean felt a cold sense of inevitability about that and he glanced away from his father, from his mom and Sam even as the crowds muttered around them. He knew it; he just fucking knew there would be a price for screwing up so badly. Castiel had said only the Righteous man who began the Apocalypse could end it and it made perfect sense to him that the ending would involve some sort of sacrifice

"No way," Sam said immediately. "No way." He raised his hand as if he was going to lash out with whatever mojo it was he had now and Dean grabbed his arm.

"Don't, Sammy," he said almost too numb to speak. "It's not worth it."

"It sure as hell is," John said sharp with anger, and turned to the Metatron. "I don't care what the rules say, my boy, our boys have given more than pretty much anyone here. If anyone deserves to go into the City of God, it's them!"

"Believe me, John, they don't belong in there." And then Bobby lifted his chin a little, and crossed his arms over his chest. "I wouldn't quite say you did, either, but you've been there before. But those are the rules. Dean stays."

"Wait." Castiel stepped forward, approaching Bobby. "You are the voice of our Father. Did he speak these words to you? All that these have done have been because the forces of Heaven and Hell manipulated, blackmailed and forced them to their purpose. Where lies his fault in that? I see nothing but bravery, and courage that would make any angel ashamed. Whose Rules are these?"

Castiel had been quieter since they had rescued him from the Hell fragment, and he understood that. Everything seemed overwhelming, but to see him stand before what he remembered as God's right hand angel and effectively express the cardinal sin for angels of doubt was a little stunning.

"These rules are mine. I spoke them to myself, as I am your Father. Dean Winchester needs to remain right where he is. Anyone else who wants to enter the Kingdom can do so. Think before you speak sedition against me, you damn fool. You made it this far on Faith, I shouldn't have to drag you the last half mile."

God damn, that was creepy. Bobby's voice was overlaid with harmonics of power that put the hairs up on the back of his neck.

"You are not my Father," Castiel said not backing down and meeting the Metatron eye to eye. "You are the Voice of God, you have been separate from him for many ages past. No longer do I blindly follow those who say they speak for my Father. I am an obedient son, but I have learned. My heart and conscience is a truer guide than the words of those in power. I would hear this command, so unfair by all the words our Father has left us, from his own Self, before I accept it is his Will. And even then, would I plead, for all judgment surely would find the suffering of his chosen vessel sacrifice enough."

Dean stared a moment and then muttered to Sam. "Dude, did Cas just demand to speak with the manager?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"At this point, how do any of you think that's a good idea?" John asked.

"This is a fairer command than you would suspect, but. You seek to speak with him, your request will be granted, due to these damn strange circumstances." The Metatron gestured and there was a flare of light.

All of a sudden, behind him he heard the whumph of something large igniting, and Dean turned around to see the Impala burning with a miraculous silver and gold fire that billowed and swirled around it without consuming it while an immense presence dominated the air around them, pressing on him enough to make his knees buckle. He pulled himself up though and stared into the conflagration.

Castiel immediately fell to his knees as did all of the other angels present, and many of the humans followed suit.

"My car..." Dean said, in choked amazement. "God's graduated from talking out of burning bushes to _my car_!"

It had to be a sign. Maybe. Dean wasn't sure if God was gonna get the supreme -- hah -- irony of possessing his car as a sign of His Almighty Presence. He was just going to blame Cas for that firmness to the 'His'. He half expected a booming voice of thunder, but when the presence spoke, it was in a quiet level voice that seemed somehow incredibly familiar and that everyone could hear no matter where they were. He was half convinced it was in his head.

"You dare challenge my word, little angel."

"My Father, I have striven to be true to thy Will," Castiel answered and Dean could see that he was trembling like a leaf. "But, I find in my heart I cannot stand and accept what is said without question. Dean Winchester and his brother have had their choices taken from them all their lives. They have suffered death, endure torments and loss in your service, and fought greater foes than even your mightiest archangels. To deny one a place of peace and rest when he deserves it most of all because he had no choice and suffered greatly torments no mortal man could endure... then yes, my Father, I question if this is truly your intent."

"You question my intent." His car was repeating words back at Cas, and if Dean wasn't mistaken, the damn thing sounded snotty and really fucking wound up about it. "You, one of the lowliest of my creations, question my intent."

"Yes, Father." It looked like it was physically causing Cas pain to stand against God and Dean didn't like that. Fuck this.

"Hey, seriously. You got a problem with me, God, don't have a go at Cas okay?" Dean called out, stepping forward.

"Castiel has free will as do all my children now." And holy shit, that was the same voice coming from Bobby, different than the one from before. Dean turned, and his car was still burning, yeah, and Bobby wasn't. Bobby was taking a sip of his beer. "The kid needs to exercise it once in a while. More forcefully than he has up to now. I mean, he hung in there real good, started making the right decisions. But the other angels in his unit worked it out long before he did."

"Yeah, and they made some pretty crappy decisions," Dean replied. Okay, he'd shouted at angels, demons, archangels, killed Lucifer, apparently helped to patch a hole in the universe so he wasn't going to cower in awe, even if Bobby was playing host to the Almighty. "He was trying to do what he was told you wanted. Seriously, not the way to get him to think for himself."

A troubled thought had him glancing at his dad, because all of a sudden the parallels were way too close for comfort. "Look, I get it. I think it's a shitty deal, and if I get free will, I'm going to say it damn well sucks but everyone here has suffered enough. If they want to go, I guess they should go. I'll stay."

"Why?" Bobby lifted his chin a little, looking at Dean hard. "Why are you staying? Are you staying because it's what I'm telling you to do? If you want into that city, go. You have free will. This is your choice to close this thing out, Dean. What you choose decides what our psychic friends here start seeing. This is the great white light here."

It was disturbingly quiet around him, and Dean wondered if that was natural or not, or if Bobby...God, had somehow quieted the world, waiting for an answer. The sounds of heaven ceased and there was a feeling of expectancy and anticipation that he couldn't shake. "What's in there?" he asked finally. "What are people going to find?"

There was a catch somewhere, he could feel it.

"Peace. Bliss. Eternal rest. Their risen loved ones who I've welcomed back into the Kingdom. Freedom from pain, freedom from want. No suffering, no more loss." He took another, small swig of the beer. "But when you enter the Kingdom, you're in the Kingdom. On Earth as it is in Heaven, Dean. Your choice, and it's all about choice, Dean."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "So, on the one hand you've got your Kingdom, where everyone is really happy, not in pain, can rest forever, or you've got a patchwork world, littered with demons, angels, survivors, psychics popping out of everywhere, and that's the choice?" It seemed like a no brainer, and that was the problem. It prickled at him. Part of him believed maybe he didn't deserve to go in, but the hunter part of him looked God straight in the eye. "Pretty screwed up choice there. You wanna know what I think? I think your city there ain't the real kingdom at all. Not what this was all about. Because if it was, you wouldn't have us fighting to survive, you'd just have gathered everyone in. All this time, I've been worried about making choices and whether they're the right ones and it didn't matter, you wanted this. You wanted the whole damn thing to play out and it nearly blew up in your face with that whole Omega deal. But you know what? You're standing there wearing the body of a man I know as well as my family, and his face has the expression he wears when he's scored something good and the other person don't know it."

Still silence from everyone around him. "You made me into your righteous man, I broke that first goddamn seal and it was me because you figured you'd found someone who'd make the right choice you wanted. You want a choice? Here it is. Everyone should make up their own mind, but I'm tired, I'm fucked off, but I ain't walking into a pickling jar, no matter how blissful it is. I'll take the hard way any time over the easy way. That's my choice."

God, still wearing Bobby, took another sip of the beer, a slight smile playing around his lips. "You were worthy to take the scroll and open the seals on the book of life. The first Heaven and the first earth have passed away, but that shit about the sea? I don't know about that, seas are pretty damn important if y'all wanna keep breathing." He cleared his throat. "Funniest thing, using a mortal, you end up using their way of speaking. How about this -- Thy will be done. The gates are open for those who wish to go through them. Make your choices."

Dean half expected a stampede, but there wasn't one. The movement around him was hesitant and it was one of the angels who went first, passing through the gate into the light vanishing into light and bliss forever.

He looked at his family, and there was no sign of movement there. He flinched a little when Castiel got up and started walking, but instead he simply came over to stand with him. The only one who moved in the end was Missouri.

"Well, honey," she said. "Looks like you made the right decisions all along. Time for me to go. Things will be very different in the days ahead, but you won't be needing me. This is the end of my road and I can't sit here when I can hear my own family on the other side so loud and strong."

"Missouri…" He didn't know what to say. "Once you're in, that's it."

"I know, Dean. For some of us, this is the end of the world. For others, it's the beginning of a new one," she smiled at him and patted his hand. "Look after that brother of yours."

"Always do, Missouri," he said and watched her walk away through the gates until she faded into light with no fuss.

"It's the right choice for some of you. You'll know if it is." God moved to put a hand on Dean's shoulder, and all Dean could feel for a second was the pain in his side, hotter than lightning.

Dean nearly staggered and looked up into his eyes and for a brief moment his mind touched God, and it sent him reeling. He could see and feel shape of the plan, the waiting that had led to this moment. The knowledge that God had made himself play by his own rules to let his creations find the way and his pleasure that they had. They had found their way to the right answer a little haphazardly, but they still got there. That the ground, the earth, was the true kingdom of God and the people who chose to stay were his blessed ones because they could grow and change and come closer and closer to Him because at the end of all wayward paths was His presence. It was a heavy burden of knowledge, and one instinctively he knew he couldn't tell anyone until they had made their own choices.

"I'll be waiting when you're done, Dean," he said in a gruff voice that was filled with all the compassion he had ever despaired of finding from Heaven. "Are you done?"

Dean thought about the bits of hell that needed fixing, the places that needed mending, the work that needed doing and god, he was tired, so damn tired he wanted to say yes, but...

He shook his head. "No," he said finally. "No, I'm not."

"Your choice." God said and smiled. "I'll see you when you are. And your Bobby I'll have news for him later…and thanks for the beer."

And just like that, the timbre of his voice changed and all Dean heard, like it'd been going on the whole time inside of Bobby's head. "You son of a bitch, you can at least tell me what happened to my Amy! And -- aw, shit, you drank my beer. No one is even making beer anymore, and you had to go and drink it!"

Dean grinned at him, "Guess we better put that as a priority huh?" he said faintly relieved and found Sam, his mom and dad staring at him. "What?"

"Dude," Sam said. "You have any idea what that meant? What...God was quoting meant?"

"Sounded like Revelations," Dean admitted and shrugged. "Hey, I think he healed my side. Cool."

"Of course he healed your damn side, you're the Messiah, ya idjit, you and Sam between you. No one said it had to be one person." Bobby slapped his shoulder. "Hell, I'm tired. Talk amongst yourself, this old boy's going to get a nap back on the porch."

Dean stood there rendered speechless, even as Sam said, "Dean, I take back everything I've ever said about you underachieving."

Castiel on the other hand and took a long slow drink of the beer he had been cradling in his hand. For some reason, Dean found that incredibly amusing, especially his perplexed expression. Figured that any new world he had a part in splicing together would involve a lot more drinking, among other things. It wasn't going to be the same as before. It couldn't be with the supernatural and natural blended together and people just developing weird abilities all over the place.

What he did know was the apocalypse was now officially over, and now it meant there was a hell of a lot to do before he was done. And as he looked around at all the people he knew and cared for staying by his side while the gate of Heaven remained open beside them, the first part of that was always going to be having a family again.


End file.
